Despite the contradictions discovered in the theory of the Critique of Pure Reason, a few Kantian ideas became soon after its publishing philosophical commodities concerning a priori knowledge. First, the need to transform philosophy into a deductive science based on principles, a science that could ground all the other less abstract sciences, like Newtonian physics …
We think of Hegel not only as one of the most important philosophers but also as one of the most important representatives of the philosophy of identity. I understand here by ‘philosophy of identity’ that type of philosophy that states the fundamental identity or correspondence between the human mind and external reality. Because of its …
It is the easiest thing in the world to believe in God. We are facing an infinite universe that works like a clock. You can then deduce that the clock must have had a clock-maker. And there you are: now you have a God, i.e., an infinite active intelligence. This is the short form of …
What is matter, and how can we think of matter? ‘Matter’ is not something real in the sense that it can be given in our experience. It is not something that we can feel, touch or see as we see this apple tree or this cat. Matter is an ‘abstraction,’ as they say, or an …
Nowadays, there is a prevailing view that human knowledge is rooted in the biological needs of our animal ancestors. However, we must emphasize that such a biological rooted ‘knowledge’ has a specificity which, perhaps, was not sufficiently questioned until now: it is embodied knowledge. An animal, to fear something, must first recognize it as dangerous …
We nourish the idea that the values of good and evil are based only on social customs, that there are no Good and Evil in themselves. This is a view that is based, in its turn, on a materialist worldview. Let’s see if such a view can furnish a basis for the idea that moral …
From the way in which time and space are given to us, we can also ‘deduce’ two other new necessary thought contents: motion and matter. If we come back to the initial content of our pure representations of space and time, they are magnitudes in which there is no difference. As an empty space, space …
Concrete observations come necessarily before any theoretical scientific modeling. One needs a large pool of empirically observed data on which a scientist builds his theory, that is to say, an imagined view of the world in which things are thought to be related mathematically. Science and rational imagination are a necessary conceptual pair. The principles …
We must acknowledge that the distinction between a priori and a posteriori raises many difficulties for an understanding of Hegel’s philosophy of nature. Some interpreters have contended that the a priori character of this philosophy makes it completely senseless in that it claims the legitimacy to replace empirical research of science with the pure logical …
There is an interesting misunderstanding concerning Hegel: the idea that he wanted to explain everything through his philosophical system, that he tried to raise himself to the absolute knowledge of God. Of course, this is also based on his own words, concepts, or expressions like ‘absolute knowledge’ that accompany his explanations concerning his philosophy. But …