HIS LIFE AND THOUGHT BY ARSENI] GULYGA

Transcription

1 IMMANUEL KANT

2 IMMANUEL KANT HIS LIFE AND THOUGHT BY ARSENI] GULYGA TRANSLATED BY Marijan Despalatovic BIRKHAUSER Boston. Basel. Stuttgart

3 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Gulyga, Arsenij Valdimirovich. Immanuel Kant. Translation of: Kant. Bibliography: p. Kant Immanuel, Philosophers-Germany-Bibliography. I. Title. B2797.G [B] ISBN-13: e-isbn-13: : / All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the copyright owner. Birkhiiuser Boston Inc., 1987 Softcover reprint of the hardcover I st edition

4 To Aleksej Fedorovic Losev

5 Table o/contents Priface... ix 1 Fruits of Enlightenment "I am learning to honor man" The Self-Critique of Reason The Idea of Personality The True, the Good and the Beautiful Faith as Hope. And Love Perpetual Peace By Way of an Epilogue Chronology Notes on the Sources Footnotes

6 Preface Life and work of a philosopher cannot be unravelled into separate strands. The true events of such a life are only thoughts. Kant has no other biography than the history of his thought. He lived most of his life in one city - Konigsberg, and never ventured beyond the frontiers of East Prussia. He did not seek fame, he did not gain power; neither in living, nor in loving, did he encounter turbulence. He never married. Outwardly, Kant's life ran smoothly and uniformly. Perhaps it was more monotonous than the lives of other philosophers. That could not be said of the inner life, the life of the mind. There everything was wondrously alive. Daring ideas came into being, gathered strength, clashed with other ideas, yielded ground or ripened in the strife. Kant's thought roamed the continents, pushed beyond the confines of the earth, strove to the farthest reaches of the universe. His thought ix

7 Immanuel Kant delved deeply into the human soul in order to know itself. It was intense and dramatic. Almost all methods of modern philosophical enquiry are rooted in Kant. His ideas have undergone change, but they live on. A knowledge of Kant's philosophy is a good introduction to the study of philosophy in general. He teaches us to think independently. Kant is compared to Socrates; for Kant's philosophy is profoundly human. The Athenian sage brought philosophy down from the heavens and gave it earth as its realm. He let the cosmos be and busied himself with man. For Kant, too, the problem of man is paramount. He does not forget the universe, but man is the fundamental issue. Kant's contemplation of the laws of being and consciousness has but one purpose: to make man more human, to make him lead a better life, to stop the bloodshed, and to prevent man's being confused by utopias and illusions. Kant calls all things by their proper names. Kant was by no means the withdrawn recluse - a man not of this world. By nature he was sociable, by education and manners courtly. Very early there developed in him one life interest which extinguished everything else: philosophy. To this interest he yielded his whole being. For him, life was work, in work he found joy and meaning. Kant's life is an example of fusion of word and deed, of instruction and action. He died with a clear conscience, conscious of having fulfilled his duties. The future philosopher was a sickly child; it was thought that he would lead a short and unproductive life. Yet he lived to a ripe old age, a rich life of work and health. He achieved that by the sheer power of his will. He developed a rigorous system of hygienic rules, adhered to them, and the results were brilliant. Kant made himself. In that, too,heis unique. As long as his consciousness was clear and unhindered, Kant sought after the truth. But truth is a process. Kant never said that; he acted upon that assumption. He never deluded himself into thinking that the task had been accomplished, that the absolute had been discovered. lie improved, refined, polished his thought. Kant's life is a ceaseless development in thought, an endless search - until the last years when he no longer had control of his thought. It is difficult to read Kant. It is even more difficult to understand him. But once his thought has been grasped, it gives joy, it exhilarates. It is worth the labor - a mind strengthened by Kant's thought x

8 Preface is rewarded a thousand times over. Take theses of a lesser author, break them down, free them of verbal subtleties: what is left is mere banality. In Kant, the difficulty of exposition always points to a difficulty in the problem as well, for Kant often posed totally new problems. Of simple things Kant speaks simply, but brilliantly. The honour and the duty to write about Kant belongs to the philosopher. It belongs even more to a Russian, since there is a profound bond between Kant's thought and the hidden, fundamental thought of Russian classics. Two names should suffice - Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. They, as Kant, were moved by the fate of man; they, as Kant, saw the bottomless pit of possible conflicts, controversies, and catastrophies. Tolstoy - whom Hegel left cold - read and reread Kant. He was convinced that their views coincided. He collected Kant's aphorisms and published them. He said: "Kant's life never failed to move me deeply." He was asked, once: "Can an ordinary man grasp Kant's philosophy, and can it be made more accessible?" The answer: "Popularisation of Kant's thought would be a magnificent undertaking. I wonder whether they have done it in the West? It would certainly be highly desirable." I This book does not claim to be an exhaustive and thorough study of Kant's philosophy; it is dedicated to his life. But Kant has no biography other than the history of his thought. Therefore it was not possible to avoid philosophy. The author strove to speak about major issues and - within the limits of the material- to speak plainly. If it could not always be done, the reader should be kind and forgiving. - ARSENlj GULYGA xi