Closing Thoughts on Kant

What did Kant set out to do in his work? Essentially, the aim of Kant was to determine the conditions that led to various aspects of human thought and understanding. His method effectively built a bridge between the strict empiricist interpretation of human understanding and that of the strict rationalist. I feel that ultimately Kant achieved the building of a bridge between the two schools of thought and effectively mapped out the various forms/conditions that facilitate human understanding. In his own words his examination of the functions of the human mind have revealed that "this domain is an island, enclosed by nature itself with unalterable limits." (257). Thus, this statement calls to mind the circle diagrams that we have been drawing in class and offers a wonderful (and rare) visual image of what Kant has done. Essentially, he has revealed and explained the realm of and constraints of empirical reality. Establishing that knowledge comes from empirical sources, but, there are a priori conditions at work that must exist in such a way as to allow for our perception of empirical experience. Thus, Kant is quick to state that "the principles of pure understanding...contain nothing but what may be called the pure schema of possible experience." (258). It is clear that while we can think of these a priori conditions their objective truth is found only in their application to empirical perception. Meaning that concepts of the soul as immortal can be thought of (perhaps even in a regulatory manner) but can never be perceived as true for there is no empirical method to understand the conditions of "soul". While in the other hand the condition of space is such that without this condition there would be no concept of external objects, this concept we do have, thus the condition of space is applied to the empirical experience of objects.