Kant And The American Revolution

The Copernican Revolution was the paradigm shift from the geocentric model of the universe to the heliocentric model where the Sun is at the center of the solar system. Kant claims his philosophy represents a "Copernican Revolution" in metaphysics and epistemology. This essay will discuss how Kant's philosophy presents an analogous structure to Copernican Revolution and how such resemblance also differs from previous metaphysical claims. The ultimate question Kant is trying to answer in his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics is whether metaphysics is possible as a science (Kant, 661b). Kant comes to realize the need of finding a foundation for metaphysics when he encounters Hume, who awakened him from his "dogmatic slumber" (Kant, 662b).

To achieve this, Kant starts from finding pure intuition that allows us to connect different concepts without the help of the senses. According to Kant, such forms of intuition are, namely, time and space, because any object or experience refers to and involve time and space (Kant, 674a). But there are other forms of concepts besides time and space that can describe a thing. Thus, Kant "[represents] in a complete table what belongs to judgments in general and the various moments of the understanding . . . In this way the a priori principles as an objectively valid empirical cognition, will also be precisely determined" (Kant, 683a). He divides twelve different pure concepts of the understanding in four different categories: quantity, quality, relation, and modality (Kant, 683b). That we cannot think about an object without its corresponding concept implies that there are forms of logic and intuition within human cognition. In that sense, even if we limit our scope of knowledge within experience, we do not fall into extreme skepticism but can know how objects appear to us in the concepts given to them. It is our mind that determines the nature of experience and thought. Because Kant shifted metaphysics to the center of human experience, his philosophy can be said to be analogous to the Copernican

Primary qualities include extension, figure, and solidity that are part of the physical body and are independent of our perception (Locke, 333a), whereas secondary qualities do not exist within the object, but are contingent upon perception (Locke, 333b). In respect to Locke's argument, Kant refutes, "All the properties that constitute the intuition of a body belong merely to its appearance. For the existence of the thing that appears is not thereby destroyed, as in genuine idealism, but rather it is only shown that we cannot possibly know it through the senses as it is in itself" (Kant, 677a). Essentially, Kant is asserting that everything is a secondary quality; we cannot know about something that is independent of our perception. In this regard, Kant's metaphysical stance is similar to that of Berkeley. Berkeley also rejects Locke's distinction between primary and secondary qualities: "Let anyone consider those arguments which are thought manifestly to prove that [secondary qualities] only in the mind, and he shall find they may with equal force be brought to prove the same [primary qualities]" (Berkeley, 450a). In a similar manner to Kant, Berkeley is claiming that both primary and secondary qualities are dependent on us, not the object; However, unlike Berkeley, a strong idealist who denied the existence of the external