History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russell [401]
The critique of knowledge, as a means of reaching philosophical conclusions, is emphasized by Kant and accepted by his followers. There is an emphasis upon mind as opposed to matter, which leads in the end to the assertion that only mind exists. There is a vehement rejection of utilitarian ethics in favour of systems which are held to be demonstrated by abstract philosophical arguments. There is a scholastic tone which is absent in the earlier French and English philosophers; Kant, Fichte, and Hegel were university professors, addressing learned audiences, not gentlemen of leisure addressing amateurs. Although their effects were in part revolutionary, they themselves were not intentionally subversive; Fichte and Hegel were very definitely concerned in the defence of the State. The lives of all of them were exemplary and academic; their views on moral questions were strictly orthodox. They made innovations in theology, but they did so in the interests of religion.
With these preliminary remarks, let us turn to the study of Kant.
B. OUTLINE OF KANT'S PHILOSOPHY
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) is generally considered the greatest of modern philosophers. I cannot myself agree with this estimate, but it would be foolish not to recognize his great importance.
Throughout his whole life, Kant lived in or near Königsberg, in East Prussia. His outer life was academic and wholly uneventful, although he lived through the Seven Years' War (during part of which the Russians occupied East Prussia), the French Revolution, and the early part of Napoleon's career. He was educated in the Wolfian version of Leibniz's philosophy, but was led to abandon it by two influences: Rousseau and Hume. Hume, by his criticism of the concept of causality, awakened him from his dogmatic slumbers so at least he says, but the awakening was only temporary, and he soon invented a soporific which enabled him to sleep again. Hume, for Kant, was an adversary to be refuted, but the influence of Rousseau was more profound. Kant was a man of such regular habits that people used to set their watches by him as he passed their doors on his constitutional, but on one occasion his time-table was disrupted for several days; this was when he was reading Emile. He said that he had to read Rousseau's books several times, because, at a first reading, the beauty of the style prevented him from noticing the matter. Although he had been brought up as a pietist, he was a Liberal both in politics and in theology; he sympathized with the French Revolution until the Reign of Terror, and was a believer in democracy. His philosophy, as we shall see, allowed an appeal to the heart against the cold dictates of theoretical reason, which might, with a little exaggeration, be regarded as a pedantic version of the Savoyard Vicar. His principle that every man is to be regarded as an end in himself is a form of the doctrine of the Rights of Man; and his love of freedom is shown in his saying (about children as well as adults) that 'there can be nothing more dreadful than that the actions of a man should be subject to the will of another'.
Kant's early works are more concerned with science than with philosophy. After the earthquake of Lisbon he wrote on the theory of earthquakes; he wrote a treatise on wind, and a short essay on the question whether the west wind in Europe is moist because it has crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Physical geography was a subject in which he took great interest.
The most important of his scientific writings is his General Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755), which anticipates Laplace's nebular hypothesis, and sets forth a possible origin of the solar system. Parts of this work have a remarkable Miltonic sublimity. It has the merit of inventing what proved a fruitful hypothesis, but it does not, as Laplace did, advance serious arguments in its favour. In parts it is purely fanciful, for instance in the doctrine that all planets are inhabited, and that the most distant planets have the best inhabitants