What is the legacy of Immanuel Kant, considered our greatest philosopher?
In this talk to his Beijing high school students, Jiang Xueqin explains that Kant’s insights had a tremendous impact on the development of neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and quantum mechanics.
Kant’s philosophical revolution was equivalent to that of the Copernican revolution in astronomy. With his precise logic, Kant showed us that we were active participants in the making of reality, rather than just passive observers.
But Kant’s epistemology had three major limitations:
1. He argued we could never know true reality (the “things-in-themselves”), thus creating an ontological dilemma.
2. He did not show us the source for our capacity to interpret the world.
3. He failed to show us why interpretations would be uniform across history and cultures.
These problems led Hegel to develop his theory of the dialectic of the “geist,” which will come to influence the development of both Marxism and the nation-state.
References:
1. The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
2. The Critique of Practical Reason by Immanuel Kant
3. The Phenomenology of the Spirit by Friedrich Hegel
