Academic literature on the topic 'Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804 Contributions in philosophy of language'

This study is an attempt to establish that 20th century’s canonized Taiwanese philosopher Mou Zongsan (1909–1995) has contributed significantly to the innovative burgeoning of modern Confucianism (or New Confucianism) with the revision of Western philosophy. This is based on the hypothesis that if ideas travel through the past to the present, and vice versa, and if intellectual thinking never knows any national, cultural and social boundaries, then there is an obvious intersection and communication of philosophical thoughts of East and West. This article also contemplates the fact that Western philosophies are widely known as they are widely published, read and circulated. Conversely, due to the language barriers philosophy and philosophers from the East are less widely known. Therefore, this research critically introduces and connects the early 20th century Confucian philosopher Shili Xiong (1885–1968), his disciple the contemporary Taiwanese Confucian intellectual Mou Zongsan, along with the Western philosophers Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), and Herman Bavinck (1854–1921), through ideas like moral autonomy, ethics, ontology, and imago Dei. In so doing, the article delineates the path to study 20th century Taiwanese philosophy, or broadly Chinese Confucian philosophy which makes a bridge between the East and the West through Modern Confucianism prevalently called New Confucianism.

This dissertation deals with the transcendental philosophy of Immanuel Kant. I provide the background of transcendental philosophy before Kant, beginning from Aristotle. Kant transformed Aristotelian transcendental philosophy by using the method of the sciences in the Modern period. This method was initiated by Francis Bacon, in his method of induction. Isaac Newton transformed the method so that it could deal with verification and falsification. This Newtonian method was taken up into chemistry, serving as a guide for the analysis and synthesis of elements. Kant used this method in his transcendental philosophy, with a view to putting metaphysics onto the path of a science. Kant was first awakened to transcendental idealism in 1769, though he did not put forth a full transcendental philosophy until 1781. In his mature transcendental philosophy, he not only uses the scientific method, but he also illustrates the categories using biological imagery. After looking at the broad contours of Kant's transcendental philosophy, I deal with the first criticism of his transcendental philosophy. In replying to his critic, Kant made explicit his scientific method, while drawing from the thought of David Hume and Thomas Reid. With Kant's explanations of his transcendental philosophy in hand, I turn to an element of his non-transcendental philosophy, namely moral philosophy, in order to provide a contrast that serves to illuminate the precise nature of his transcendental philosophy.

Kant believed that the moral law is a law that the rational will legislates. This thesis examines this claim and its broader implications for Kant’s moral theory. Many are drawn to Kantian ethics because of its emphasis on the dignity and legislative authority of the rational being. The attractiveness of this emphasis on the special standing and capacities of the self grounds a recent tendency to interpret Kantian autonomy as a doctrine according to which individual agents create binding moral norms. Where this line is taken, however, its advocates face deep questions concerning the compatibility of autonomy and the conception of moral requirement to which Kant is also certainly committed – one which conceives of the moral law as a strictly universal and necessary imperative. This thesis has two main aims. In the first half, I offer an interpretation of Kantian autonomy that both accommodates the universality and necessity of moral constraint and takes seriously the notion that the rational will is a legislator of moral law. As a means of developing and securing my preferred view, I argue that recent popular interpretations of Kantian autonomy fail to resolve the tensions that seem at first glance to plague the concept of self-legislation, where what is at stake is the legislation of a categorical imperative. In the second half of this thesis, I examine the connections between my preferred interpretation of self-legislation and Kant’s dichotomisation of reason and our sensuous nature. I argue that some of the more harsh and seemingly unreasonable aspects of Kant’s moral philosophy can be defended by bringing to light the ways in which they are connected to his commitment both to the autonomy of the will and to developing a genuinely normative ethics.

This chapter examines the philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). Kant made the study of the German language, in which he wrote all his important works, almost obligatory for philosophers in every country for a century and a half. He remained connected with the university almost his whole adult life, with the exception of the six years he spent as a private tutor; and the university, in consequence, acquired national and international prestige as a place in which not only guild interests but also intellectual innovations had their place. Kant published his first epoch-making philosophical work, the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason) in 1781, when he was fifty-seven; up to that point, the greatest recognition for his work in philosophy came for the Untersuchung über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie und der Moral (Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality, 1764), which received a (second) prize from the Berlin Academy of Sciences.