The reasons of Immanuel Kant, the philosopher who was ahead of his time

His ideas seem to have come to life again. Born at the dawn of the Enlightenment, on April 22, 1724, in the Prussian city of Konigsberg, Immanuel Kant was a dedicated professor of logic, mathematics and metaphysics who, at the age of 57, surprised his contemporaries with a monumental work: Critique of pure reason, a book that changed the horizon of modern philosophy. But they were not his only contributions, he also wrote about religion, ethics, aesthetics, morality and pacifism, and his arguments resonate to this day. For example in The perpetual peace (1795) proposed the creation of a society of nations to avoid conflicts in the world, a prelude to what 150 years later would be the United Nations.

The philosopher of rational freedom

“Kant is a philosopher who ends the metaphysical tradition of the most conventional philosophy and opens thought to the challenges of modern society”, says the Peruvian philosopher Miguel Giusti. In that aspect, it could be said that he took ethics and morality out of the religious field and brought them into the domains of reason.

“He called this the Copernican turn. —explains Giusti—, Well, he used the metaphor of the change that occurred in astronomy when Copernicus placed the sun at the center of the universe and the Earth as one of its planets. For Kant, this new ethical sun was that of rational, non-individualistic freedom, exercised in a new order in which all human beings were free. And that is a current problem. Although there is respect for different cultural ways of life, in many of these societies there are forms of discrimination, inequity and injustice.”

The prejudices of the extremes

There is a particular topic related to the problem of error and illusion that interests philosopher Claudia Laos, who lives in Barcelona and is coordinator of the International Group for Reading Kantian Texts. As he explains, Kant, as a representative of the Enlightenment and in his fight against fanaticism, discovered a transcendental illusion in reason itself, when it faces issues that escape its understanding such as the cosmos, God, the soul, etc. “That was one of his great discoveries,” says Laos.

“In his effort to clarify the nature of this illusion —comments the specialist—, Kant also dealt with the illusory appearance of prejudice. For him, a prejudice is not a prior idea that we form to approach reality tentatively, but rather a subjective maxim that operates unconsciously. For example, when we say ‘Like wood, like son’, to extend the defects or faults of parents to their children, we are not applying a provisional value judgment, but rather a generalizing maxim.”.

And a consequence of prejudice is polarization. “To be guided only by the authority of something external to oneself is a source of prejudice.” -says Laos-, But it is also to be guided only by what one thinks, ignoring the criteria of others, which Kant called logical egoism.”

Therefore, one of Kant’s great teachings is that we must be able to separate our illusory appearances (prejudices) from the legitimate motivations that may exist in those who think differently than us. “Otherwise —Laos points out—, we will have broken all possibility of dialogue. And that leads us to intolerance, to cancel culture, to a society in which we are all suspected of being linked to an enemy side or to some conspiracy theory.”. In other words, to that post-truth world that Kant seemed to warn of three centuries ago.