Philosophy of Immanuel Kant

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Recommended: Similarity between rationalism and empiricism

There are different views about how we gain knowledge of the world, through our senses or through our minds, and although many say that it is one or the other I believe that although we gain some knowledge through sense data not all of our ideas come from these impressions. There are those who stand on the side of empiricism, like David Hume, and those who stand on the side of rationalism, like René Descartes; then there are also those who believe that one can have a foot on both sides, like Immanuel Kant. To be on one side or the other never gives you full knowledge you must be willing to use your senses and your reason to form ideas.
Kant was to first to step away from choosing a side. Kant changed philosophy in the way that he showed that certain aspects of rationalism and empiricism were wrong. Kant was also the first to say that objects conform to our knowledge meaning that rationality puts a structure on sense data to be experienced as objects. This view has more logic than rationalism or empiricism because if a person is of the belief of one of these two views it can lead to skepticism and certain important aspects have a tendency to be disregarded. This is why ideas cannot come from impressions because there are important matters, such as God, that cannot be explained by impressions and some of which we do not have impressions of but we do have ideas about them. In order to know how and why a combination of the two is needed one first needs to understand each individual side.
Empiricism is the belief that all knowledge and ideas come from the senses and that the only way we can know anything about the world is through those senses. This has a tendency to be true in the fact that people learn from their mistakes. Growing u...

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...pendent reality Kant makes the distinction that distinctions occur within experience instead of a division of realities.

Works Cited

Kant, Immanuel. Part Three: The Modren Period, Chapter 22 Immanuel Kant
Hume, David. An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding: A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh: Hume's Abstract of A Treatise of Human Nature. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub., 1993. Print.
Descartes, René. Meditations on First Philosophy: In Which the Existence of God and the Distinction of the Soul from the Body Are Demonstrated. Trans. Donald A. Cress. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub., 1979. Print.
Plato. Plato's Republic. Trans. G. M. A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub., 1992. Print.
Boethius. Consolation of Philosophy. Trans. Joel C. Relihan. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub., 2001. Print.
Reid, Thomas. Thomas Reid’s Inquiry And Essays: Intellectual Powers.

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