The Kantian View of Reality

Immanuel Kant is one of the most famous philosophers to have ever lived. His works covered quite a number of topics - from moral philosophy, to philosophy of religion, to idealism, and many more. But one thing he is most famous for is his introduction of the noumena/phenomena distinction. 

Kantian scholars disagree over how exactly to interpret his works, but there is no doubt that Kant made a distinction between the world as perceived by the human mind (the phenomena), and the reality beyond the human mind (the noumena). 

For Kant, reality is divided into two: the domain of experience and a domain which human experience cannot reach. We can call this the Kantian view of reality. 

The phenomenal realm is the domain of human experience and it is intelligible to the human mind. This is the part of reality that man can understand and make intelligible. However, Kant, unlike the empiricists and rationalists, believed that the human mind is active in gaining knowledge. What this means is that the mind actively categorizes and systematizes the objects of experience, as opposed to passively having sense data or ideas imprinted upon it. The implication of this is that the phenomenal realm is a product of the rational activity of the human mind. The phenomenal realm is simply the mind imposing a priori categories upon the world.  It is due to this rational activity of the mind that man is able to understand anything (more on this later). 

In Kant's view, the noumenal realm is impenetrable to the mind - it is a world of mystery. It represents the part of reality that is beyond the rational organization of man’s mind. Kant’s objection to the traditional theistic arguments - particularly the cosmological argument - was that the categories they relied on (causation, contingency, etc.) only applied to the phenomenal realm therefore it is wrong to make conclusions about things that are supposedly beyond that realm - for example, the existence of a transcendent God. Kant argued that the only god that could be proved by such arguments was a god that was a product of man’s rational activity. However, Kant also pointed out that the kind of God the theist wants to prove may exist in the noumenal realm. For him, this is where faith comes in. 

So we can see that for Kant the noumena is a realm of mystery and infinite possibility. It is a realm that is non-rational and independent of any subject’s rational activity. Kant wanted to protect human rationality from this mystery and chaos by bifurcating reality and separating the rational from the non-rational.

One other feature of Kant’s view of reality is the activity of the mind of man when it comes to knowing the world. Kant was famous for proposing this view as opposed to the idea of the passivity of the mind which was widely held by the empiricists of the time. The empiricists held that the mind of man passively receives sense data and through that he is able to know about the world. One example of this view was John Locke’s proposal that the mind of man was a tabula rasa - a blank slate upon which information from the external world is imprinted. Kant, in contrast to this view, proposed that the mind of man actively categorizes and rationalizes the data he receives through his senses. He proposed the idea of innate categories which man possesses prior to any empirical experience. It is through these innate interpretive categories that man rationalizes his experience. This is why Kant’s view may be described as a form of a priori rationalism.

It should be noted that Kant’s apriorism follows from his noumena/phenomena distinction - or rather, they are mutually entailing. If the noumena is an unknown world of mystery, then to know that world man must actively rationalize it. On the other hand, if man’s mind is active in its knowledge of the world, then given his finite nature, his rationalization cannot extend to the entirety of reality. Thus, he ends up with a separation between the rational and the non-rational.

Many unbelievers would claim to disagree with Kant’s view of reality. However, I would argue that Kant provided the most consistent expression of an unbelieving metaphysic. All non-Christian metaphysical views are in one way or another Kantian in nature. The reason for this is that all non-Christian metaphysical views reject the existence of an absolute Person. The implication of this rejection is that all rationality in the universe must arise from the mind of man. But man is not an absolute being. He is finite, subject to various limitations and restrictions, and the nature of reality does not depend on him. Therefore, he ends up being a spec of rationality surrounded on all sides by non-rationality.

Regardless of what metaphysical system the unbeliever wants to propose, he cannot escape his own finite nature. Because man is finite, there would always be aspects of reality that are beyond his understanding. As such, a bifurcation of reality similar to the noumena/phenomena distinction will always arise - there will always be a realm that is known/knowable and a realm that is unknown/unknowable. Furthermore, the knowability or intelligibility of the world will always depend on man’s mind because his thinking is original. It is original in the sense that the facts of the world receive order, categorization, systematization, and rationalization first and foremost in the mind of man. As we mentioned before, he is the sole source of all rationality in the universe. 

We see that the rejection of Christianity leads to a bifurcation of reality into a rational and non-rational aspect, and the activity of the human mind in gaining knowledge - the two defining features of a Kantian view of reality. There are several problems with such a view, however.

One problem is that the non-rational surrounds and potentially influences the rational. The part of reality that is supposed to be rational and intelligible is only rational and intelligible due to the mind of man acting upon the non-rational noumena. However, if the noumena really is a realm of mystery and non-rationality, how can finite man make it conform to his rational categories? The truth is that Kant’s view entails that all of reality is non-rational and mysterious. Man’s attempts to rationalize a part of it end up in subjectivism at best. All man knows, given this view, is the structure of his own mind. Whatever rationality or intelligibility that exists in the realm of the phenomena is a rationality for man and not a rationality that is true of the world itself. Kant - and all of unbelief - failed to escape the skepticism of Hume.

More could be said, but this has gotten pretty long already. What you need to understand is that all unbelief is Kantian and the problems for Kant’s view apply to all unbelieving philosophies. You can take as long as you like to meditate on this. Also, if you have any questions, you can send them my way - I’ll be happy to answer them!

P.S. If you enjoyed this and would be interested in learning more, I suggest grabbing a copy of my book, The Best Argument for Christianity here.

Cheers!