Immanuel Kant in the History of World Philosophy and Culture

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to pinpoint Kant’s place in the history of world philosophy and culture. Its main task is to substantiate thereby an alternative to the historical notion that prevails in the Western and Russian academic environment today, that Kant belongs entirely to the Enlightenment era. This idea is false: if the enlighteners put experience at the forefront, then the great Königsberg thinker initiated a real spiritual revolution with his teaching, which paves the way to the realization that true knowledge of the objective world and its change for the better is impossible only through experience as a spontaneous relationship of thinking and being, blindly encouraging people to do so. Already under Kant, the dogmatism of thinking incorporated into blind experience began to hinder people from achieving real freedom, giving rise to its simulacra. The authors of the article explore the prerequisites of Kant’s critical philosophy and the reflection of experience undertaken by Kant, with which he began to philosophically reveal the reasonable basis of empirical sciences, morality, art, and religion. In addition, the article shows how Kant’s achievements were developed by Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. The article concludes that the relevance of Kant’s teaching, updated by our time, consists in the fact that he began a philosophical understanding of experience, thus stimulating the achievement of the highest goal of the history of world culture — the complete reasonableness of the human spirit, because only it guarantees to mankind eternal peace, i. e. the prosperity of the peoples of the Earth, not overshadowed by wars.

Keywords:

Kant, history of philosophy, aesthetic experience, scientific revolution, world culture, eternal peace, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel