Kant and the Fall

Immanuel Kant and his contributions to Rationalism are profound. His work has come up in my Ethics class, a business class, and several psychology classes. The material covered in each of these courses is similar, mostly pertaining to his Categorical Imperative. The Categorical Imperative asserts that “I should never act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a universal law” (pg 195). To begin, a notion of universality underlies Kant’s thinking. While the Categorical Imperative is a predominant outcome of Kant’s work, it is just one reflection of his understanding of the mind. Kant believed that the mind exists but can not be studied; we we have knowledge of the physical world but will never experience it directly. Further, he believed that sensory data is necessary, however, something that he termed “categories of thought” have to add to the data a priori in order for knowledge to be attained. There is a schism that is present. He stresses the need for universality to explain the morality of decisions and yet also states that our minds are not whole, all knowing things that have complete understanding. That makes it difficult to reach a universal conclusion. For this reason I classify Kant and his understanding of the mind in the Fall. Kant’s understanding of sensory impressions and categories of thought influences our phenomenological experiences. Our minds are claimed to be the center of the universe and all other physical things are just details that we cannot fully understand or know. Creation characterized the original union between God, man, and all that God created. There was a fullness of knowledge and understanding- I cannot help but wonder at the fact that maybe man and God once shared knowledge. After the Fall a brokenness incurred and Kant’s stance on the fence of empiricism and rationalism shows the division present in his attempt to understand the mind. Many arguments could be presented that Kant best fits instead with Redemption because of his attempt to explain the realities/existences of time and space. The formulation of the perceptions draws Kant and those who take on his views back to a union in understanding the internal world that Kant emphasized and the external world that Kant recognized. For this blog’s purposes though, I think I will stick to the Fall category because of the underlying desire to explain and permit things in a universal way (attributing to something greater) while recognizing that divisions in mental processing exists which make a universal understanding difficult. Maybe I could just settle and say that because Kant even felt the need to understand morality at all means that immorality exists and immorality is a result of the Fall.