Kantianism

Definitions

  • Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
    • n Kantianism The doctrine or theory of Kant; the Kantian philosophy.
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Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
    • n kantianism The doctrine of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), one of the most influential of metaphysicians. His leading work, published in 1781 (second edition in 1787), is the “Kritik der reinen Vernunft,” or “Critic of the Pure Reason” (the word critic, borrowed from Locke, being the name of a science analogous to logic). His fundamental position is that just as blue and red are said to be “imputed” qualities, which do not exist in the outward things themselves, but are only the modes in which these things affect the eye, so every attribute is merely a mode in which the mind is affected, and has no application to a thing in itself. This is true even of such predicates as existence and possibility, and equally so of non-existence and impossibility. In short, a thing in itself is absolutely unthinkable. But just as it is quite true that one thing is blue and another red, in the sense of really so affecting the eye, so Kant does not attack the real externality of matters of fact, but only that of the forms under which alone they can be apprehended by us. The ideas which the mind thus imports into knowledge are of two kinds—those which are presented in sensation, and those which are introduced in the process of thinking. The first kind, that of the forms of intuition, consists of the ideas of space and time. Space is the form under which alone we can have external perceptions. Time is that in which all our inward experience must clothe itself, and thus our outward sensations, too, when they come to be reproduced in reflection. Thought, on the other hand, is obliged to assume the forms of propositions, and thus arise twelve general conceptions (categories). For as a proposition is either universal, particular, or singular, so the object of thought must have quantity; as propositions are either affirmative, negative, or infinitated, so the object of thought must have degree of reality, as propositions are either categorical, hypothetical, or disjunctive, so the object of thought must be either a substance with attributes inhering in it, or a cause with its effect, or mutually reacting elements; and, finally, as a proposition is either contingent, necessary, or problematical, so the object of thought must possess corresponding modes of being. In attributing an unchangeable character to these conceptions, Kant is profoundly hostile to the spirit of empiricism; but in limiting human knowledge strictly to objects of possible experience, he seemed to strike a severe blow to metaphysics. Religious ideas are, however, to be admitted as regulative principles. Kant is a severe moralist, his rule being “Act so that the maxim of thy will can likewise be valid as a principle of universal legislation.”
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Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary
    • ns Kantianism the doctrines or philosophy of Kant
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Usage

In literature:

From this point of view it becomes easy to escape Kantian relativity.
"A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson" by Edouard le Roy
But there are various questions that at once suggest themselves which the Kantian theory leaves unanswered.
"A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5)" by Henry Smith Williams
His conduct stands the Kantian test, which Peter Shirley's does not.
"Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara" by George Bernard Shaw
He leans upon Kantian ideas, but without scholastic constraint.
"The Aesthetical Essays" by Friedrich Schiller
To these objections the Kantian school have never found an answer.
"Pragmatism" by D.L. Murray
The recent struggle against Kantian and fideist Modernism is a struggle for life.
"Tragic Sense Of Life" by Miguel de Unamuno
But neo-Kantianism has developed on higher lines than those of physiological psychology.
"An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy" by W. Tudor Jones
Nevertheless, Coleridge was not mentally adapted to the Kantian system.
"History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology" by John F. Hurst
Kantianism like Platonism failed because it still left the sensible unaccounted for.
"Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge" by Alexander Philip
The Neo-Kantians 403 Sect.
"The Approach to Philosophy" by Ralph Barton Perry
Such is the governing idea of the Kantian criticism.
"Creative Evolution" by Henri Bergson
I should wonder at the Kantians, if they did.
"Hesperus or Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days Vol. I." by Jean Paul Friedrich Richter
The great weakness of the Kantian doctrine of Morality lies in the fact that it retains Free Will, even though it gives it another name.
"Morals and the Evolution of Man" by Max Simon Nordau
Green tends to repeat the Kantian separation of the self as reason from the self as want or desire.
"John Dewey's logical theory" by Delton Thomas Howard
This was, for example, the effect of the Kantian philosophy on Heinrich von Kleist.
"Thoughts Out of Season (Part II)" by Friedrich Nietzsche
It is a task analogous to the Kantian deduction of the categories.
"International Congress of Arts and Science, Volume I" by Various
What the reality is, is the problem of the thing-in-itself (to use the Kantian term).
"Schopenhauer" by Thomas Whittaker
The exposition of them, though highly dogmatic, is at times strikingly Kantian in substance.
"Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 13, Slice 3" by Various
The latter alternative would be the one chosen by a truly Kantian agent because it is alone possible in practice.
"Ethics" by John Dewey and James Hayden Tufts
The Kantian critique of reason did not understand the universality of truth.
"The Positive Outcome of Philosophy" by Joseph Dietzgen
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