A friend recently sent me this following essay with the above title:

Cdnuolt blveiee that I cluod aulacity uesdnatnrd what I was rdanieg. Tihs is the phaomnmeal pweor of the hmuan mnid. Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabridge Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oerdr the ltteers in a word are, the only iprmoatnt thnig is that the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. This is bcuseae the hmuan mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by itself, but the wrod as a whohe. Amzanig, huh? And I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! My screen is filled with red squiggly lines--how about yours?

However smart we may feel about now, we're all about to challenge our IQs considerably. This week we will consider what may be the most formative mind in modern Western history. What he did was so significant and influential that his ideas are still the intellectual air we breathe this morning. Many historians of Western culture suggest that the story is Plato, Aristotle, and Kant. I agree, and not in that order.

Let's see why.

Last week we looked (very) briefly at Medieval thought through the eyes of Anselm, Abelard, and Thomas Aquinas. Now let's run across the bridge from their world to the "modern" era. Make three quick jumps with me.

First we stand on Medieval feet, intellectually. Philosophy is based on authority structures. Revelation comes through the Church. Our primary concern is for the God-man relationship.

Now we jump to the Renaissance. Reason becomes more important than before, as it is shaped through our study of nature and classical literature. Authority structures are deemphasized, the autonomy and enlightenment of mankind is elevated, and concern for the man-man relationship reigns supreme.

Then we jump to the Reformation. Revelation comes not through Church or intellect but Scripture. Authority is found not in Church or man but Scripture. The God-man relationship is crucial once again.

Finally we leap to Rationalism. Reason is the normative means of discovering truth. There is no authority structure outside our reason. Our concern is for the man-man relationship. Here's why.

Rene Descartes (1596-1650) made each of these jumps with us. His was a Jesuit education, coupled with a fascination for mathematics. In light of the Reformation, he wanted to give his beloved Catholic Church a stable and reasonable foundation. In response to the popularity of the Renaissance and its Enlightenment, he felt this foundation must be strongly rational.

So he reasoned as any mathematician would: start from an unquestionable position, then reason to an unassailable conclusion and proof. Using the mathematical premise of doubt, Descartes soon realizes that he can doubt anything he can think of. He can doubt even his own existence. But what is the one fact he cannot doubt? That he is doubting. If he is doubting, by definition he is thinking. Result: "I think, therefore I am" (Cogito, ergo sum, the only Latin words even non-Latin speakers know).

Now Descartes is free (in his own mind) to reason from reason. He thinks he has proven the authority of human reason. So he will apply it to the rest of reality. By rational definition, God is absolute or he is not God (shades of Anselm). He can be the only absolute Substance. Everything else, including mind and body, must be a "relative" substance. God cannot be absolute Substance if he is bound to the material--rather, his existence must be spiritual/intellectual in nature. And God has given us the ability to reason, so that we can be in his "image" and comprehend his creation.

And so God puts in our minds "innate ideas" which give structure to human nature. These structures of rational investigation are the means by which we learn what we know, as they define both truth and relevance. (Unfortunately for his followers, Descartes was never able to relate such a mind to the physical body. In time, this problem would destroy pure rationalism as a philosophy.)

Descartes was sure that his insistence upon reason as the origin and test for truth could be used to demonstrate conclusively the rationality of the Catholic Church in the face of its detractors. But he was wrong. This insistence in time actually worked against the faith he sought to serve. If reason is the test and source of all truth, then why do reasonable people need revelation? The Church? God?

Exactly so, said Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677). Spinoza was born into Jewish faith, but read Descartes and renounced his Judaism. He was expelled from his synagogue, worked as a lensmaker, and was despised for centuries as an atheist.

Spinoza reasoned that there is only one (rational) substance in all reality, and apparent differences are only apparent. So, what is this substance?

Godfrey Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) had the answer: "monads." Leibniz was sure that reality is made of these tiny units. "Monads" contain life in themselves, and are all of the same shape and size. They are arranged and moved by the "Prime Monad"--God. Higher-order monads (like us) perceive more than we reflect; lower-order monads (like this paper) reflect more than they perceive.

Balderdash, said the rest of the philosophical world. And they were right. Spinoza and Leibniz show that the ultimate result of pure rationalism is not rational at all. In their insistence that reason is the only substance in the world, they are not reasonable.

And the philosophical pendulum swings in the other direction.

Philosophers have their "parties," just like Democrats and Republicans. If the Rationalists were one, the Empiricists were the other. "Empiricism" is the belief that ideas are derived from experience through the senses, not from reason in and of itself. Let's watch them come to a bloody end, just like the Rationalists.

Their story begins with John Locke (1632-1702). A student of philosophy, natural science, and medicine at Oxford, he was an important politician in England. His primary philosophical concern was with epistemology (the theory of knowledge). And his ideas have shaped the way Americans see ideas ever since.

Locke reasoned that we are born with our minds a "tabula rasa" ("blank slate"). All we know comes from experience, writing on these "slates." Our sensations (coming directly from experience) and reflections (upon sensations) produce knowledge. We must be satisfied with probability, since our senses can deceive us (agreeing with the ancient Skeptics).

Locke applied this epistemology to politics in defense of democracy. We learn moral law only from experience, and desire to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. This desire should be protected by the government, so that our "inalienable right" to the pursuit of happiness is preserved. No Locke, no Thomas Jefferson.

Keep going: empiricism in theology leads to Deism. The only fact you can state about God is that he is the creator of the world (we had to come from somewhere or Someone). Everything else is the result of individual, subjective experiences. So we posit a God who made the world but does not participate in it today, and we have Deism (with Locke its father). Again, no Locke, no Jefferson.

From Locke we move to George Berkeley (1685-1753). This Irishman, Bishop of Cloyne and missionary to Rhode Island wrote his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge in 1710. He took Locke a step further: if all we know comes from experience, then the world as we know it can only be the world we perceive. This is "solipsism": "to be is to be perceived." Berkeley reasoned that God perceives all that is, which is why the world holds together when we're not looking. But he couldn't prove that it was so by objective experience.

So David Hume (1711-1776) took the stage, and empiricism to its logical conclusions. His Treatise on Human Nature (published when he was 26 years of age) and Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding argued this basic thesis: where there is no impression there can be no knowledge. Hume denied even causality as non-empirical.

He thus denied the cosmological (from Creator to cosmos) and teleological (from Designer to design) arguments for God. His radical empiricism led ultimately to the death of empiricism. For ultimately, if Hume is right, we can know nothing. As a result, Hume is called the "Father of Skepticism." From Descartes' "doubting is thinking," we have come to Hume's "doubting is doubting." Another dead end.

Enter the "savior of Western thought," Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). This quiet, unassuming professor in Konigsberg, Germany would have been nominated by none of his childhood friends to be known for anything. They would each have been wrong.

To simplify the notoriously complex Kant: we must rescue philosophy from the twin dead ends of pure rationalism and pure empiricism. How? The senses provide the "data" which the mind "interprets." The result is "knowledge."

Of course, we say. Everyone thinks that's true. Precisely the point.

Let's start with Kant's epistemology (as described in his Critique of Pure Reason, one of the most influential philosophical treatises of all time). Kant believed that your mind brings rational structures to reality. Rather than being impressed by reality through sense impressions only (as the empiricists said), your mind interprets these sense impressions. It uses innate (with Descartes) "categories" (not ideas, vs. Descartes). According to Kant, "although all our knowledge begins with experience it does not follow that it arises out of experience."

What are these categories, you ask? Kant provides the answer:

(amount):
1. Unity

2. Plurality

3. Totality

(kind of material)
4. Reality

5. Negation

6. Limitation

(of substance to other substance)
7. Inherence and subsistence

8. Causality and dependence

9. Community

(of patterns within substances)
10. Possibility / impossibility

11. Existence / non-existence

12. Necessity / contingency

Let's (over)simplify things. Kant believed that he identified the key questions your mind inherently asks of every sense experience given to it: how much? what kind? how does it relate to other things? what patterns can we identify and predict? We cannot help asking these questions--this is the basic way our minds innately work.

To use an analogy totally foreign to Kant's world, think of your mind as the software resident in your computer. Your senses are the keyboard, being typed on by the external world. Your software interprets the keystrokes, resulting in "knowledge" which is imprinted on the disk drive and printed on paper.

Isn't this how everyone thinks that thinking works? Not before Kant.

Kant "saved" philosophy from itself. He showed that we can bring rationalism and empiricism together in a third model which uses the best of both and makes reasonable living possible. Western thinkers owe him an enormous debt of gratitude.

But we are indebted to Kant for more than the good results of his legacy. He has also contributed mightily to the relativism, pluralism, and materialism of our age. Here's how.

Kant called that which is knowable by our senses the "phenomena." That which we cannot know empirically is the "noumena." His conclusion: we cannot know the "thing in itself." Our minds interpret the sense data given to them, resulting in knowledge as we know it. But we cannot have objective knowledge of objective reality. This is simply impossible for us. By this measure, how are we to see miracles? Divine revelation through Scripture? Christian ethics? It's all "your truth," but only yours.

So how should we live? Kant's "moral imperative" was simple: do your duty, for the sake of your duty (from his Critique of Practical Reason). If everyone did what you're thinking of doing, would it be right? Is this your duty? (It is tragically possible to explain Hitlerism in the light of Kant's theory of duty.)

What is beautiful? In his Critique of Judgment Kant argued for objective aesthetic theory: things are beautiful (or not) as they possess characteristics which the mind's categories affirm (or not).

The upshot of Kant's influence: Western philosophy is both empirical and rational. But the truths that matter--God and his relationship with us--are neither. Clearly, Christians must respond to the Kantian challenge if we are to defend the objective truth of Scripture and faith. Or we are doomed to live in his relativistic world.

Where to begin? With his premises. Kant argued that we cannot know objective truth. His statement is itself a claim to objective truth, is it not? He claimed that we cannot know the "thing in itself." This is itself a claim about the "thing in itself," is it not? While I would certainly not argue that my sense impressions of reality, as interpreted by my mind, constitute all of objective reality that exists, the limitation is with me, not with reality. There is objective reality. And we should strive to know it as best we can. Our limitations are not to be embraced but overcome.

Kant's thought is the air most Western minds breathe, until they suffocate. Next week, let's open the windows.

Copyright © Godissues.org 2006. All rights reserved.

Other segments of the "Why do we think the way we do?" series:

"Why do we think the way we think?"

"A stonecutter and the Savior"

"A broad thinker and the world he left us"

"The biological philosopher"

"So what?"

Just the facts, ma'am