Chapter 11 Flashcards
(9 cards)
What two things did Kant want to reconcile together?
Newtonianism with a robust morality
What is rationalism? What did Kant think of the rationalist Descartes?
Rationalism is the view that reason is more important than sense perception. Kant thought Descartes went wrong and was too optimistic about what we can know.
According to Kant, which philosopher fell in the opposite ditch of Descartes. How so?
Hume did. He focused too much on the senses and was too skeptical about what we can know.
Is Kant an empiricist or a rationalist?
Neither. he doesn’t emphasize one over the other. Rather, he valued both. We need our senses to inform our reason and our reason to interpret our senses.
What is the noumenal world? What is the phenomenal world?
The noumenal world is the physical world that exists outside our minds; the phenomenal world is how things appear to us, our perception of the noumenal world.
Does Kant believe in the noumenal world?
Yes, but he believes we have no way of knowing what it is actually like.
Come up with a scenario in which one’s civic duty overrules one’s duty as a scholar. Now come up with a scenario in which your duty as a scholar overrules your civic duty.
This is just off the top of my head, but one’s civic duty seems to overrule one’s duty as a scholar when harm or injustice might result. E.g., when violent protests occur, one should help reduce the harm occurring and shouldn’t join even if you sympathize with them. One’s duty as a scholar similarly overrides one’s civic duty when injustice or unjust harm occurs. E.g., a soldier ordered to kill an innocent civilian should not do so.
What does Kant believe the responsibility of a monarch is? Do Kant’s opinions reflect the era in which he lived? How so?
He believes the monarch’s responsibility is to represent the will of the people and preserve civic order. We see this sentiment reflected elsewhere in Kant’s era, such as in America’s War for Independence and the French revolution.
Kant writes that laziness and cowardice are the main reasons people stay unskeptical: “It is so comfortable to be a minor…no need to exert myself.” What are some scenarios in which Kant’s skepticism is fitting? What are some scenarios in which Kant’s skepticism is out of place?
Kant’s skepticism is fitting if we are in fact letting them do the thinking for us and we believe them without consideration of whether it is true or not. However, if the book, the pastor, the physician are merely supposedly expert sources of informations whose veracity we then consider for ourselves, then Kant’s skepticism is out of place, for we are thinking for ourselves and using them to further our understanding and consideration of the topic.
