Critique of The Kantian Philosophy - Kant's Merits

Kant's Merits

According to Schopenhauer's essay, Kant's three main merits are as follows:

1. The distinction of the phenomenon from the thing-in-itself.
   • The intellect mediates between things and knowledge.
   • Locke's primary qualities result from the mind's activity, just as his secondary qualities result from receptivity at any of the five senses.
   • A priori knowledge is separate from a posteriori knowledge.
   • The ideal and the real are diverse from each other.
   • Transcendental philosophy goes beyond dogmatic philosophy's "eternal truths," such as the principle of contradiction and the principle of sufficient reason. It shows that those "truths" are based on necessary forms of thought that exist in the mind.
2. The explanation of how the moral significance of human conduct is different from the laws that are concerned with phenomena.
   • The significance is directly related to the thing-in-itself, the innermost nature of the world.
3. Religious scholastic philosophy is completely overthrown by the demonstration of the impossibility of proofs for speculative theology and also for rational psychology, or reasoned study of the soul.

Schopenhauer also said that Kant's discussion, on pages A534 to A550, of the contrast between empirical and intelligible characters is one of Kant's most profound ideas. Schopenhauer asserted that it is among the most admirable things ever said by a human.

• The empirical character of a phenomenon is completely determined.
• The intelligible character of a phenomenon is free. It is the thing-in-itself which is experienced as a phenomenon.

Kant's logical table of judgments is kept almost unchanged as the real, invariable, primary forms of thinking.