Practical Significance of Kant's Critical Philosophy

Kant's critical philosophy is of great significance and far-reaching influence. In particular, Kant's philosophical thought is very advanced and has not been out of date so far.

First, Kant's limited cognitive thought foresees the development trend of post-modern thought and has strong foresight.

Kant lived in the18th century, and the western postmodern trend of thought came into being after the 20th century. Kant and postmodernism seem to be out of touch. However, Kant's epistemological philosophy puts forward the idea of human finiteness. This view coincides with Nietzsche's relativism, Heidegger's existentialism and postmodern philosophy.

Kant believes that people's understanding is very limited, and they can only know the phenomenon world, that is, the experience world related to the sense of time and space; As for the world outside the phenomenon world, it is not the scope of scientific cognition, and this world is called the thing itself.

Kant's finiteness thought is of great significance, which directly inspired many later thinkers.

Like Heidegger. The basic position of Heidegger's existentialism is the finiteness of human existence. For example, human life is limited because there is a boundary of death; Human life is limited, because everyone has been thrown into this world, and it is impossible to predict the meaning and purpose of existence.

Heidegger's thought about the finiteness of life points out the development direction of modern western culture, that is, human life is full of contingency, and people can't predict the purpose of life at all, because God has fallen and the ultimate goal cannot be determined.

Nietzsche's philosophy also contains the idea of limited life.

In Nietzsche's view, there is no absolute value and truth in the world, and everything comes from human creation. In other words, all the meaning of existence in the world is due to contingency and the creativity of superhuman will.

Superman legislates for himself, for others and for society. This creative passion has no universal law, and everything comes from the creativity of the will of life.

Nietzsche's theory of superhuman will leads to the limitation of life and culture. In Nietzsche's eyes, except the eternal superhuman will, all other values in the world are relative and can be deconstructed and destroyed.

Nietzsche's relativism values are exactly the same as Kant's relativism epistemology. They all deny the absolutist view of truth and advocate the relativity of human knowledge or culture, that is, contingency.

Secondly, Kant's theory of space-time intuition accords with Einstein's theory of relativity and has a strong advanced nature.

Kant believes that human understanding can only be limited to the phenomenal world, that is, to the scope of space-time perception. Among them, the world of time perception is related to intellectual categories such as causality and relationship; The world of spatial perception is related to concepts such as geometry and quantitative analysis.

According to Kant, the biggest extension of human scientific knowledge is time and space, and things beyond time and space do not belong to the object of knowledge, not scientific knowledge. Kant's above viewpoint has been confirmed by modern relativity and has a solid scientific foundation.

Kant believes that causality, as one of the intellectual categories, is related to the sense of time, that is, the cause comes first, the result comes later, and the time condition determines the essence of causality first.

In other words, the causality sought by scientific knowledge, such as the causality of physical movement, the causality of chemical change and the causality of life phenomenon, is what people usually say: What is the reason behind this matter?

All these causal relationships are related to time and are limited by specific time conditions. Once out of the time condition, all causality will be invalid immediately.

Kant's view has been confirmed by Einstein's theory of relativity. According to the relativity principle, modern scientific knowledge is based on time and the speed of light, and causality can only be established if it does not exceed the speed of light.

Once the speed of an object is equal to the speed of light of 300,000 kilometers per second, time immediately stops, and the causal relationship fails, that is, the cause and the result appear at the same time.

If an object moves faster than the speed of light and time goes back, the causal relationship will be reversed, that is, there is a result first, and then there is a reason. This kind of cognitive logic obviously violates people's common sense of time, which is incredible.

Facts have proved that until today, the speed of motion of objects will not exceed the speed of light, so it is still effective to explain the secrets of the universe and nature within the scope of causality. This is a great insight of Kant's philosophy.

Thirdly, Kant's theory that "nature is generated by human beings" conforms to the principles of modern quantum mechanics and has important scientific significance.

Kant's philosophy holds that in the process of understanding the world, it is not the world that affects people, but people that affect the world. This is the enlightening significance of the philosophical proposition that "nature is generated by man".

Kant believes that the absolutely objective world does not exist, and neither does the absolutely objective knowledge. In other words, the world and knowledge are related to people and to people's feelings or thoughts.

For example, we can't see the world independently and objectively, and we can't see the world through transparent glass. The vast world before us has been filtered and artificially processed by human senses (intuition in time and space). The phenomenal world is a second-hand world, not a real first-hand world.

Many people criticized Kant and accused him of being an idealist. Admittedly, Kant never hated being called an idealist. On the contrary, in the history of western philosophy, most famous thinkers are idealists, such as Pythagoras, Plato, Hegel, Husserl and so on.

In Kant's view, scientific knowledge is not an objective truth, but a combination of sensory materials and intellectual categories; The universality of scientific knowledge does not come from the outside world, nor is it consistent with the objective world, but from the universal inevitability of human subjectivity and innate intellectual category.

Kant's subjective epistemology philosophy echoes modern quantum mechanics, which has been proved by quantum mechanics science.

According to the principle of quantum mechanics, it is impossible for people to know the world independently and objectively. As long as they observe and study the world, they will have some interference or influence on the world. In other words, an absolutely objective and neutral understanding does not exist.

Furthermore, the principle of quantum effect has proved that the collapse of quantum state requires the intervention of observers, and it is impossible to determine the exact state of things without knowing the observers.

For example, a friend is a guest at home. There are two rooms in the home, a living room and a bedroom. If you don't go to the room in person, you can't be sure which room your friend is in. This is called the quantum state of uncertainty. Only when you see a friend, the quantum state collapses, can you know where your friend is. This is the role of the observer.

In a word, Kant's philosophy contains many important scientific revelations, and these philosophical insights have been proved by modern natural science, which is enough to show that Kant's philosophy is of contemporary significance and worthy of in-depth study.