To say that Immanuel Kant 's work was influential would be an understatement. His work marked a paradigm shift in western philosophy with his infamous Copernican revolution. Both the analytic and continental traditions can be said to be a response to Kant 's ideas. Still today, Neo-Kantian thinking is still being applied to contemporary thinking today. However, Kant 's work is remembered more for its impact on philosophical thinking, rather than its modern applicability. In both traditions, Kant 's thought was viewed as perniciously flawed due to his distinction between phenomena and noumena (things in themselves). This specifically concerns the ontological status of the noumenal realm, which leads to collapse in Kant 's philosophical foundations.
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By marking an epistemic shift from the noumenal to the phenomenal realm, Kant places knowledge solely within the realm of appearances. By doing this, Kant shares with modern phenomenologists the overarching goal of "saving the phenomena".13 Kant roots the knowledge of phenomena into a thinking about being itself.14 He marks a major shift from the previous and predominant school of transcendental realism, and opens up the phenomenological method of simply beginning to analyze what makes our experience possible. Phenomenology is drawn out of this difficult distinction between appearances and the mind-independent real and Kant takes an important step in clarifying this distinction.15 By emphasizing the epistemic value of the phenomenal realm, Kant can be seen as opening up phenomenological …show more content…
While differing from the dogmatic form of metaphysics, Kant 's metaphysics still presupposes conditions of possibility for phenomena that do not phenomenologically arise. Rather than being seen as existing before experience, Kant sees this metaphysics as transcendentally deduced from experience. The main example is the transcendental subject, who can be deduced as the condition of possibility that makes the synthetic unity of experience possible. This still entails a form of realism, insofar as these nonempirical structures are viewed as necessary in order to speak of an experience in general. Kant holds that reason has a tendency to take these nonempirical structures, and move them beyond the sensible manifold and into the noumenal realm itself.18 While this subject does not arise phenomenologically, Kant holds that it is necessary for us to have any idea of a coherent experience at all. While fundamentally critical, Kant still demands a form of
By marking an epistemic shift from the noumenal to the phenomenal realm, Kant places knowledge solely within the realm of appearances. By doing this, Kant shares with modern phenomenologists the overarching goal of "saving the phenomena".13 Kant roots the knowledge of phenomena into a thinking about being itself.14 He marks a major shift from the previous and predominant school of transcendental realism, and opens up the phenomenological method of simply beginning to analyze what makes our experience possible. Phenomenology is drawn out of this difficult distinction between appearances and the mind-independent real and Kant takes an important step in clarifying this distinction.15 By emphasizing the epistemic value of the phenomenal realm, Kant can be seen as opening up phenomenological …show more content…
While differing from the dogmatic form of metaphysics, Kant 's metaphysics still presupposes conditions of possibility for phenomena that do not phenomenologically arise. Rather than being seen as existing before experience, Kant sees this metaphysics as transcendentally deduced from experience. The main example is the transcendental subject, who can be deduced as the condition of possibility that makes the synthetic unity of experience possible. This still entails a form of realism, insofar as these nonempirical structures are viewed as necessary in order to speak of an experience in general. Kant holds that reason has a tendency to take these nonempirical structures, and move them beyond the sensible manifold and into the noumenal realm itself.18 While this subject does not arise phenomenologically, Kant holds that it is necessary for us to have any idea of a coherent experience at all. While fundamentally critical, Kant still demands a form of