Kant: A Revolution in Thinking
by
Summary of Kant: A Revolution in Thinking by Marcus Willaschek
The book was very good overall. I liked the bite-sized chapters and learned a lot. However, it was much too repetitive; it read more like a series of independent blog posts rather than a coherent narrative. I would have liked if all the important stuff Kant did was first. Instead, it was scattered around, with most of it not coming until the end.
Kant is most famous for his revolutionary approach to a priori knowledge. What are we able to deduce about how the our world (and indeed any possible world) must be like before we actually do examine it ? Kant's major insight here was a result of a change in perspective, similar to Copernicus. By changing our point of view we can see the problem more clearly. Copernicus did this by explaining the complicated motions of the planets in terms of the POV of an observer on a moving earth. Kant does in metaphysics - for all potential experiences that we can possibly have. His insight is that our view of the world is colored not only by what actually exists but is also fundamentally constrained by the way humans can experience the world. It is like anthropic reasoning applied to the human (rational agent) perspective. The constraints on our experiences necessarily apply in any/all possible worlds and thus can be known a priori: independently from any particular details of how the world is. Our ways of viewing the world imply what is possible to be seen.
I was surprised to the extent to which Kant emphasized practice or action over abstract theory. Kant thought that science and philosophy were not ends in themselves but that they should actively contribute to the improving of people's lives. He used this to rationalize belief. eg: Kant thought that we could not prove the existence of God (he claimed to have proved this), but thought that if it was morally required to assume God's existence, then it would be rationally justified, even in the absence of a rigorous philosophical proof. Kant takes the same position for free will; we must assume the existence of free will on moral grounds, even if it can't be proved. This reminds me of Godel. Some questions can be shown to be undecidable within a system (philosophty/science) but there truth can be determined by transcending the system, in this case with morality.
Other interesting takeaways: Kant was a late bloomer. He only got started at ~40 and only really became famoust at ~60 . He claimed "Only at 40 is one mature enought to aquire a character - that is to decide for oneself how to live one's life". Kant refused to travel. He basically never left is relatively minor home town Konigsberg.