Critique of Practical Reason

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Historical Context for Critique of Practical Reason

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Deeper Study Historical Context for Critique of Practical Reason

Kant and the Enlightenment

Kant can be regarded as both a participant in the 18th century Enlightenment and as a critic of it. He certainly agreed with the French Encyclopedists in celebrating rationality, and in regarding the achievement of his age as that of gradually bringing reason to bear against the forces of superstition, in both the area of science and the realm of religion. (For more about his attitude, see his 1784 essay "An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment.") At the same time, however, Kant's philosophy attacks several groups that may be seen as carrying reason too far: metaphysicists who presume to understand God and immortality, scientists who presume their results to describe the intrinsic nature of reality, skeptics who presume to show belief in God, freedom, and immortality to be irrational.

Besides his belief in the importance of rationality, Kant also shared the Enlightenment view that all humans are capable of reason and hence that all are endowed with moral worth. For this reason, he was an enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolution; although saddened by its excesses, Kant regarded the revolution as moving toward a form of government that would recognize the equal worth of all people from a form of government that did not. Although the Critique of Practical Reason is not an explicitly political book, and although Kant was forced even in his political books to refrain from overt support for the revolution for fear of censorship, the following Critique of Practical Reason can be regarded as expressing the view of morality that underlay his revolutionary sentiments.

Kant's other intellectual influences included the Newtonian mechanics of the day, the rationalistic Leibniz-inspired metaphysics of Christian Wolff, a contemporary, and the skeptical empiricism of David Hume, a philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment. Kant's metaphysics can also be seen as attempting to reconcile the rationalist and empiricist movements.

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