Kantian Epistemology

[Preston82]

I am a new Kantian in regards to my epistemology. What are some of the Catholic critiques of Kant? Is he relevant to a Catholic understanding of Theology in any way?

 

[Bravo_6]

By his doctrine of what he called the “Categorical Imperative,” there might be something there?I don’t know much at all about him to be brutally honest,except in view of some of his studies,methods,etc,people may say “he may have been a sandwich short of a picnic” if you get my drift?I’m sure there’s someone on here(there always is)that can bring some light to what you’re asking.

God bless,

JMJ

 

[Theophorus]

I am a new Kantian in regards to my epistemology. What are some of the Catholic critiques of Kant? Is he relevant to a Catholic understanding of Theology in any way?

Kantian philosophy is rather different from the perennial philosophy(Aristotle, St Thomas Aquinas etc.) endorsed by the Church in the last two thousand years. While I’ve no doubt Catholic theologians have been influenced by Kant just as they have been influenced by Hegel(Karl Rahner for instance), Kant’s views would not be generally accepted as being compatible with a Catholic understanding of things.

Philosophically Kant reinterprets metaphysics with his neumona and phenomena, where we cannot know being, merely appearances, and so the traditional catholic understanding of the truth coming from the conformity of the intellect to things is reversed( of course you know all about apriori concepts of space and time etc so I won’t go into that).

This brings me to my main problem with Kant. That he only really admits knowledge which is immanent to the subject. We do not know the ‘what’ of a thing only the objects of experience are accessible to us, yet the thing itself must somehow exist. We must posit the existence of several things without any proof whatsoever of their existence for the Kantian system to work(we must posit God for ethics to work, we must posit some concept of metaphysics/being for phenomena to work etc.) As Friedrich Jacobi said “without the thing in itselff we cannot enter the kantian system, but with the thing in itself one cannot remain in the kantian system.”

 

[catholictiger]

I am a new Kantian in regards to my epistemology. What are some of the Catholic critiques of Kant? Is he relevant to a Catholic understanding of Theology in any way?

Bernard Lonergan is probably the best philosopher for discrediting Kant’s epistemology. To put it in the simplest terms I can. (these theories are complex)

Lonergan says that we have knowledge from experince understanding and judging.

we experience something, or simply we receive sense data from the outside world. For example you hear rustling of leaves in the bush right outside your window.

we then have understanding of that sense data, this mostly comes from insight. For example you think that maybe someone is trying break into your house from the window and that is why the leaves are rustling. At this moment you have what Lonergan calls insight.

then you have judgements where you take your insight and you look for sufficient data to fulfill the conditions of the insight. For example you look outside the window and notice it was just the wind, the conditions were not fulfilled and you proved that it wasn’t so. Another example he gives is that a man comes home to an untidy house when it was tidy before he left. He has the insight something happened and he also has the judgement something happened because the conditions are fulfilled.

For lonergan in oder to have knowledge you must have all 3 parts. Evidence without understanding is nothing really, understanding without evidence can’t be anything you can’t understand if you have nothing to understand and if you don’t question your understanding you can never be sure of something. Judgement without observations and experience is also nothing, you must have something to judge. So you must have experience understanding and judgement.

one last thing for lonergan Knowledge is dynamic it builds on itself it continues to search for the unknown it adapts and integrates and so on and so forth.

Now for Kant his theory of knowledge centers around his categories, pretty much the categories are a-priori concepts of the mind which inform reality to give us an understanding of it. So for example when we make the judgement the rose is red we get rose and red from our sense experience and the existence (is) is put into the thing. Meaning that the thing doesn’t have existence in itself rather it is put into it by the mind.

So for Kant to have knowledge all you need is the apriori categories and sense experince. Which makes it deficient it is clear from our experience of the world that we come to knowledge through experience understanding and judgement, Kant fails to talk about this. Another problem with Kant is that his knowledge is static it doesn’t adapt it doesn’t change it doesn’t keep on asking questions. This again is a difficent explanation of knowledge.

I hope this makes sense this actually pretty deep epistemology and may be difficult to understand but this is one way to argue against Kant.

 

[MilesVitae]

Kantian philosophy is rather different from the perennial philosophy(Aristotle, St Thomas Aquinas etc.) endorsed by the Church in the last two thousand years.

Hmm? I thought Aristotelian philosophy did not gain widespread acceptance among Catholic thinkers until the middle ages?

 

[Theophorus]

Hmm? I thought Aristotelian philosophy did not gain widespread acceptance among Catholic thinkers until the middle ages?

Not so. The entire corpus of Aristotle did not reach the west until the 1200s but bits and pieces remained throughout. It was largly but not completly lost in the west from about AD600-AD1100(as we stopped speaking greek). for instance Boethius(died ca. AD. 525 used Aristotelian categories in his explination of the Trinity, he also translated parts of the organon into latin, and these parts were in use until better translations came along. The Neo-Platonic thought of St. Augustine was also influenced by Aristotelian aspects. This of course ignores the eastern Church who held on to Aristotle throughout and from whom we received the definitive texts in the 1250s(ish).

Incidently for the church the fullest expression of the perennial philosophy has been St. Thomas Aquinas, but any philosophy insofar as it reflects the truth(i.e the semina verb, seeds of the word spread thourghout the world) can be considered part of the perennial philosophy. Kantian neumona and phenomena and an innability to know God by reason(simply having to posit him for ethics to work) certainly wouldn’t fall into this category.

Incidently could you recommend some of the works of Lonergan which ‘deconstruct’ Kant as it were, or does he negate him? As Lonergan seems a tad Hegelian for my liking.

 

[MilesVitae]

Not so. The entire corpus of Aristotle did not reach the west until the 1200s but bits and pieces remained throughout. It was largly but not completly lost in the west from about AD600-AD1100(as we stopped speaking greek). for instance Boethius(died ca. AD. 525 used Aristotelian categories in his explination of the Trinity, he also translated parts of the organon into latin, and these parts were in use until better translations came along. The Neo-Platonic thought of St. Augustine was also influenced by Aristotelian aspects. This of course ignores the eastern Church who held on to Aristotle throughout and from whom we received the definitive texts in the 1250s(ish).

Okay - there was controversy over Aristotelian philosophy when it became more widespread in the 13th century, though, yes?

Incidently for the church the fullest expression of the perennial philosophy has been St. Thomas Aquinas, but any philosophy insofar as it reflects the truth(i.e the semina verb, seeds of the word spread thourghout the world) can be considered part of the perennial philosophy.

Hmmm, okay. My impression, from the manner others have used the term, was that the perennial philosophy was meant to indicate simply Thomism.

 

[Preston82]

Thank you all for replying. I am still working through the consequences of Kant. what I’ve found helpful about him is the distinction between the Noumena and Phenomena. It seems self evident that we can only know a thing/object as it appears to us, not as it is in itself. This doesn’t mean that the thing doesn’t exist outside of us, but that we cannot know it outside of ourselves. This has been the most helpful for me.

Also, I’ve been told, and have seen through my own readings, that Kant is similar to Aristotle in terms of the Categories. Though Aristotle was a direct realist and Kant a representative realist, they still posit Substance and Categories in order to know a thing/object. What do you all think about this? Couldn’t the Noumena/Phenomena distinction help us understand the Eucharist in that we may not understand the Substance as it is apart from our senses, yet it appears as such and such? Just thinking.

 

[Theophorus]

Okay - there was controversy over Aristotelian philosophy when it became more widespread in the 13th century, though, yes?

While ther were problems they stemmed mainly from misinterpretations of Aristotle and of the islamic commentaries thst came with the translations. Western ‘Averrosim’ for example would probably not have been recognised by Averroes himself, although some strands of radical Aristotelianism did break out in the university of Paris.

Hmmm, okay. My impression, from the manner others have used the term, was that the perennial philosophy was meant to indicate simply Thomism.

Well the philosophy of St. Thomas is the fullest expression of the perennial philosophy so it is unsurprising that he gets portrayed as such, I’m guilty of it myself no doubt, but philosophy insofar as it investigates the ultimate causes of things and seeks the truth as the intellect grasps the reality of things, and actually finds the truth of things it, is part of the perennial philosophy. The catholic understanding of natural law likewise allows for the discovery of the one and the same truth by a variety of individuals. In sofar as any philosophy reflects the truth of things it can be considered perennially valid. St Thomas simply did this best by building on the works of others mainly Aristotle but also St. Augustine, and the islamic philosophers Averroes, Avicenna and no doubt other people as well.