The Philosopher With The Same Name As Miriana’s Song: KANT

When Miriana Conte was forced to change her Eurovision 2025 song name from ‘KANT’, Partit Momentum leader Arnold Cassola suggested the following:

But who even was Immanuel Kant? And why is he considered one of the most important philosophers to have ever existed?

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher born on the 22nd of April 1724 into a Prussian German family in East Prussia.

He was the 4th of nine children and was raised in a devout Pietist family: a Lutheran movement emphasising biblical doctrine alongside individual piety. But it wasn’t until Kant was into his 50s that he wrote important works that made him famous.

Kant’s Ideas

One of the biggest debates in philosophy was between rationalists and empiricists.

Rationalists believed that knowledge could be acquired through REASON ALONE. Empiricists believed that knowledge could be acquired through SENSORY EXPERIENCE.

Kant wanted to reconcile the two. Kant argued that both were correct but missed something important.

The mind, Kant said, has concepts & forms of intuition, which interpret the sense-data we receive from the world. In his book, A.C. Grayling uses the example of cookie-making and pastry cutters to explain this.

‘Flour and water are mixed then rolled out into a flat formless shape, on to which pastry-cutters are pressed to make such various figures as circles and stars.’

The pastry-cutters are the faculties of the mind which allow us to interpret the world and make sense of it. This is an attempt to answer a thorny philosophical question: how do we even know what we know? However, crucially, Kant is saying that we can only know the world through this process of interpretation.

We CANNOT know the world as it is.

He calls the world as we experience it the ‘phenomenal world’. He calls the world as it is the ‘noumenal world.’ For Kant, things like the soul and free will lie in the ‘noumenal world’ and we cannot make any legitimate claims about them. This does not mean that Kant disbelieved in them. He argued that we may assume them as necessary for moral life.

This brings us to his philosophy on morality.

Kant thought that a person who is about to act should ask: ‘what if everyone does what I am about to do?’ In other words, if I am going to steal, is this action something that I am okay with everyone else doing?

If the answer is no, then, says Kant, don’t do it! This is known as the CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE. For Kant, human beings are ends in themselves. They cannot be used as a means to another end. For Kant, morality is therefore UNIVERSAL. There are no ‘ifs’ or ‘buts’. This is known as ‘deontological ethics’ or ‘rule-based’ morality.

This is different from, say, consequentialist arguments, which evaluate actions depending on the results. Kant’s ideas were a representation of ENLIGHTENMENT thinking. For him, morality comes from our rational will, not outside authority.

He emphasises human dignity & freedom, and saw the moral goal as the ‘SUMMUM BONUM’ – the highest good where virtue & happiness align.

Some critiques of Kant:

if lying is always wrong, then lying to save someone’s life would also be wrong.

Kant is also essentially saying that morality depends on intention and their ability to become universal, NOT results.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

#MaltaDaily