Kant's Introduction to Logic and His Essay on the Mistaken Subtilty of the Four Figures

by Immanuel Kant

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Genres: Philosophy, Logic

116 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1800

About the author

Immanuel Kant was an 18th-century philosopher from Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). He's regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of modern Europe & of the late Enlightenment. His most important work is The Critique of Pure Reason, an investigation of reason itself. It encompasses an attack on traditional metaphysics & epistemology, & highlights his own contribution to these areas. Other main works of his maturity are The Critique of Practical Reason, which is about ethics, & The Critique of Judgment, about esthetics & teleology.

Pursuing metaphysics involves asking questions about the ultimate nature of reality. Kant suggested that metaphysics can be reformed thru epistemology. He suggested that by understanding the sources & limits of human knowledge we can ask fruitful metaphysical questions. He asked if an object can be known to have certain properties prior to the experience of that object. He concluded that all objects that the mind can think about must conform to its manner of thought. Therefore if the mind can think only in terms of causality–which he concluded that it does–then we can know prior to experiencing them that all objects we experience must either be a cause or an effect. However, it follows from this that it's possible that there are objects of such a nature that the mind cannot think of them, & so the principle of causality, for instance, cannot be applied outside experience: hence we cannot know, for example, whether the world always existed or if it had a cause. So the grand questions of speculative metaphysics are off limits, but the sciences are firmly grounded in laws of the mind. Kant believed himself to be creating a compromise between the empiricists & the rationalists. The empiricists believed that knowledge is acquired thru experience alone, but the rationalists maintained that such knowledge is open to Cartesian doubt and that reason alone provides us with knowledge. Kant argues, however, that using reason without applying it to experience will only lead to illusions, while experience will be purely subjective without first being subsumed under pure reason. Kant’s thought was very influential in Germany during his lifetime, moving philosophy beyond the debate between the rationalists & empiricists. The philosophers Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer saw themselves as correcting and expanding Kant's system, thus bringing about various forms of German Idealism. Kant continues to be a major influence on philosophy to this day, influencing both Analytic and Continental philosophy.

Reviews

[Jordan Coy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very little of this is about Formal Logic. It's mostly a compendium of Kant’s system of thought. Logic is more like a shorthand for the process of how Kant thinks about epistemology and metaphysics.
Logic is not how we do think but how we ought to think 4

Logic is divided into Analytic and Dialectic 6-7
Analytic- formal criteria of truth
Dialectic- rules by which we should be able to know that something does not agree with the formal criteria of truth

Two branches of knowledge that are a priori (prior to any experience)--
Mathematics and Philosophy 13

The field of philosophy can be reduced to these questions: 15
1. What can I know? (Metaphysics)
2. What ought I to do? (Morals)
3. What may I hope? (Religion)
4. What is Man? (Anthropology)

Mathematics has always preceded philosophy 18

All our knowledge is twofold-- relation to the object & relation to the subject 24

The Formal criteria of truth in Logic: 42
Principle of contradiction-- logical possibility (not self-contradictory)
Principle of sufficient reason-- logical well-founded (rests on principles & has no false consequences)

Attributes:
Either Analytic or Synthetic 49
Analytic- partial conceptions of my actual concept; all rational concepts
Synthetic- partial conceptions of the mere possible total concept; concepts by experience

Positive and Negative attributes
Positive by what we learn what a thing is; Negative by what it is not. Negative is necessary where we can be kept from erring 50
Kant here mentions Apophatic theology (speaking of God by negation, or speaking about Him by saying what may not be said about Him) “With respect to the concept of a Divine Being, the negative attributes are very necessary and important”

The totality of all the essential elements of a thing or the adequacy of its attributes in respect of co-ordination or subordination, is its Essence 51

Knowledge: Assent from a reason which is both subjectively and objectively adequate, or Certainty, is either Empirical or Rational…the two sources from which all our knowledge is derived-- Experience and Reason. 61

If you are wanting a crash course in Immanuel Kant, this is a good starting place. Lots of definitions and distinctions within a 100 page book.

4/5 Recommended starting point for studying Kant’s philosophy

[Averill · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Amongst all nations the “Greeks have been the first to philosophize, for they first attempted to cultivate rational knowledge, not with the help of figures, but in abstracto; whereas all other nations attempted to make concepts intelligible only by images. So even at the present day there are nations, such as the Chinese and some Indians, who treat, indeed, of things which are taken from reason only, as of God, the immortality of the soul, and many such things, and who yet do not attempt to study the nature of these objects by concepts and rules in abstracto. They make here“no separation between the use of reason in concreto and that in abstracto. Amongst the Persians and Arabians there is, indeed, some speculative use of reason ; but they have borrowed the rules of this from Aristotle, and thus still from the Greeks. In the Zend Avesta of Zoroaster we do not discover the smallest trace of philosophy. And the same holds good of the highly-praised wisdom of the Egyptians, which, in comparison with Greek philosophy, was a mere child's play.”
Well I guess it's good to know that Kant had great drugs in his town. How do you bring up the likes of Pythagoras, and tryin' down play the Egyptians? Sad.

[Jake Yaniak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kant's treatment of the syllogistic figures is invaluable; it reduces Logic once again to its primitive principles, whereas many logicians had built a web of confusion around a very simple science.