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Introduction to Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason' Pure concepts were Kant's interest, and because philosphy so often claimed to be dealing in pure concepts, he analyzed all that it had to offer in the most scientific way possible. He had been brought up on the philosophy of Leibniz, particularly as channelled through the great systematizer of the eighteenth century, Christian Wolf. The subject of " innate ideas" had been passed down by Leibniz, harshly opposed to the Englishman Locke who in his 'Essay concerning Human Understanding' had sought to prove that the mind in itself was a 'tabula rasa' (or 'blank canvas'), and that all ideas contained within had been derived somehow or other from without. Leibniz himself had responded to what he saw as the ridiculously simplistic position on Locke's behalf, with his 'Nouveaux Essais sur l'Entendement Humain' ('New Essays on the Human Understanding'). Kant himself had rested on the rationalist side of the river for some time, and it took the sceptical writings of David Hume (whose 'Enquiries' but not whose 'Treatise' he was acquainted with) to awaken him from what he referred to as his 'Dogmatic Slumber'. It was this thinker alone who really made him reflect on the nature of human knowledge, and it was actually from the point of his acquaintance with David Hume that Immanuel Kant began thinking in a far more 'Critical' way about the human mental faculties. It would be Kant's reconsideration of the human mind that led him to a standpoint parallelling that of the 'Copernican Revolution', for he came to realize that the Mind was the centre of the Universe, just as Coper-nicus had come to realize that the Sun, and not the Earth, is the centre of the 'Solar System'. Kant identifies himself with the Astronomer time and again, believing that he has effected just as seminal a revolution in Epistemology. "Living Time ®" is a Registered Trademark and "Living Time ™" is here asserted as a Global Trademark protected by International Intellectual Property Law and by UK Trademark Legislation. |
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