What Is Immanuel Kant's Prioric Judgments?

Immanuel Kant was a German Philosopher who lived from 1724 to 1804. Kant is one of the most important figures who helped shape western philosophy and is most known for his works in metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. Kant was also hugely influenced by David Hume as he was the man who woke Immanuel up from his “dogmatic slumber” (Solomon 421). Kant incorporated ideas mainly from Hume but blended in ideas of other philosophers such as Descartes while including both Empiricist and Rationalist ideals. Kant does recognize that a posteriori judgements are possible, but he concludes that synthetic a priori judgements provide the basis for a large part of our human understanding. Kant defines a priori judgements as ideas that are based upon reason alone without the inclusion of experience. This idea is similar to Descartes theory of innate ideas because Kant argues that some judgements are universally applicable and learned when an individual enters this world. Kant also defines what Synthetic judgements are and contrasts that with analytic judgements. He states that synthetic judgements are those whose predicates are entirely different from the subjects they describe and are caused by the external events surrounding the concept do not not affect the idea itself. These synthetic judgements are usually very controversial since they can have an

He begins this argument by using the example of a triangle and how the angles inside the triangle add up to form the angle of a straight line (180°) which represents a synthetic idea. Kant argues that this truth is not in our concept of a triangle, yet in is a universally accepted idea. He also mentions the example of adding seven and five and receiving twelve. He mentions that this represents synthetic a priori judgements because our concept of “twelve” is not explained in terms of seven plus