From Cartesian Rationalism and Humean Empiricism, we now move to the Transcendental Idealism of Immanuel Kant. In reading the beginning of the Prolegomena, what do you make of Kant's project? What seems to be his main objective? Can you make sense of where he disagrees with Hume? And what's the big deal with synthetic a priori propositions? Though Kant is by no means an easy read, if we first see what he wants to do, we should be able to get a pretty good handle on Kant's philosophy as a whole.
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Immanuel Kant is as hard to read as he is boring. Having studied in him in Philosophy 220 I know this man can be tough. It seems that Kant feels almost the same way as Hume, in that the to study the metaphysics is a waste of time. Kant feels that Hume did not go far enough though. “He threw no light on this kind of knowledge; but he certainly struck a spark from which light might have been obtained”(Hume pg 2) Kant seems to want to take it a step further. He wants to extend the “cause and effect” relationship further and explore the matter more deeply. He explores this in mathematics and geometry. He then goes to say that math is not analytic but synthetic a priori. His examples shows 7 + 5= 12. He explains that if you take 7 + 5 you see that it will be a “union in a single number” but you one can not figure out this problem without prior knowledge of the number 12. Without this prior knowledge you know the sum is some number, but do not know it.
Kant's discussion on synthetic and analytic judgments are confusing and yet at the same time his simplest ideas to comprehend. Analytic knowledge comes from first observations. He uses the observation that the human body is extended as an analytical observation because it requires no previous knowledge of the body to come to this conclusion, only the perception that we get by looking at it. An example of some synthetic judgment would be to say the human body has weight. This is not analytic because it requires knowledge of the human body. In this case, the body must be measured and weighed to determine it has mass. Now, cognitive knowledge has been added to the subject because it is a universal truth that all bodies have mass. A further proof that it is synthetic is that it falls under the rule of contradiction; another subject heavily influencing Kant's discussions. Therefore, to say that "no bodies have no weight" is synthetic because it is true. If a body were to have no weight it would not exist, further reinforcing Kant's ideas of synthetic judgements.
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