Immanuel Kant And The American Revolution

1819 Words8 Pages

Nicole Bettencourt
Abstract:
Why is Immanuel Kant known for the Copernican Revolution? Copernicus discovered that the earth revolves around the sun, while the opposite was thought before him. Similarly, in the Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant reverses the traditional relation, subject / object. Kant theorizes that the subject being central to knowledge. Prior to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, philosophers proposed that the object was central to the theory of knowledge. How Immanuel Kant defines knowledge and how the theory arises within thy self with the aspect of time as the base form.
For Immanuel Kant, knowledge exists as sensibility and understanding. Kant’s primary aim is to determine a theory of mental activity. Kant attempts …show more content…

The next step is to separate sensibility from any sensations. By separating these two components the end product will be nothing more than our “pure intuition and the mere form of appearances, which is all that sensibility can supply a priori.” After this procedure the two forms that arrive are space and time which are principles for a priori cognition. The two forms of a priori cognition- space and time- are also two forms of the transcendental aesthetic. Kant recognizes the transcendental aesthetic to be the main basis of knowledge, because both time and space are needed for human beings to have sensibility. “All actuality of appearances is possible only in time” If time did not exist, neither would our appearances, for in order for a human to experience an object they must exist and, to exist one must be in time. Also, time must be a priori; since time is sequential it cannot be known by experience …show more content…

Than knowledge is the unity of apperception for perceiving which is understanding and sensibility is pure intuition that gives us a base that is universal. This universal base built with the syntheses and apperception is the theory of mind. The theory of mind for Kant is constructed with time, for Kant proves his theory of knowledge by introducing transcendentalism, syntheses, and apperception with the base form of time. By linking these aspects of transcendentalism, apperception, and syntheses in the mind, with time as a base, Kant is able evolve his theory of