Dr Tom Kerns
North Seattle Community College

 

A Too-short outline of
Kant's Epistemology

Immanuel Kant
(1724-1804)

(See this introductory lecture on Kant's epistemology)

Kant's books on metaphysics

• Critique of Pure Reason (1781)
• Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic (1785)

I. Kant's metaphysical question: "Are Synthetic, a priori judgments about Noumena possible?"

Some terms

Aspects of the Real	Phenomenon (a)	Noumenon (a)
Ways of Knowing	a posteriori	a priori
Kinds of propositions	synthetic	analytic

 

II. The Categories of Perception:

The transcendental forms of perception are: Space and Time

The Categories of Perception

Of Quantity	Of Quality	Of Modality	Of Relation
Unity	Reality	Possibility - Impossibility	Inherence - Subsistence
Plurality	Negation	Existence - Non-existence	Causality - Dependence (cause & effect)
Totality	Limitation	Necessity - Contingence	Community (reciprocity between agent & patient)

 

Thus, the phenomenal world is:
"The temporal, spatial, causal manifold."

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