Kant

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

Major ideas: Transcendental idealism; Categorical imperative.

Major works: Critique of Pure Reason 1st edition (1781), Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics (1783), Critique of Pure Reason 2nd edition (1787), Critique of Practical Reason (1788), Critique of Judgement (1790).

I don’t think there is a more popular philosopher than Immanuel Kant on YouTube. You could spend days watching all the talks and lectures given about his philosophy by expert and amateur alike, but would you be any the wiser? I’m not sure. Unless you know what you want from Kant in the first place it is difficult to read his works (or watch his ‘videos’) and immediately see the light. I read (bits of) Kant as an undergraduate at the University of Nottingham over 20 years ago, and to be honest, I did not grasp him at all. OK, so I was not the most attentive of philosophy students, but I managed to get the gist of Locke and Hume and I thought (or rather liked to think) I had Hegel and Marx nailed. But Kant mystified me, and in many respects he still does.

I would not expect anyone but God to get Kant from a single reading. And although you might understand what is being said on YouTube you might come away thinking...

“So what? He was a philosopher that said we can never grasp the thing-in-itself; all we can ever know comes from our own experience, and all our knowledge is only of things-for-us [this is what is meant by Kant’s transcendental idealism]. But doesn’t everyone think that nowadays? Don’t pundits like Richard Dawkins dismiss God as an unknowable thing-in-itself? And wasn’t Kant’s moral philosophy noble but impractical? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you [a so-called categorical imperative as far as Kant is concerned]. Never, ever tell lies. Isn’t that what we teach children before they learn the value of the white lie? And wasn’t Kant also a bit restricted in his day-to-day outlook, never leaving Konigsberg his entire life? He might have been a great philosopher but he's not someone from whom we can learn much to get us through life today. Give me Gandhi or Steve Jobs!”

This is pretty much how I felt about Kant until about 10 years ago, when, not having shaken the nagging feeling that I has missed something going on in his philosophy, I picked up Edward Caird’s The Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant. This work consists of two volumes (both very large but no larger than Tim Noakes’ Lore of Running – after all, I don’t want to put you off) first published in 1889, which seem to be rather neglected today. As I worked through Caird over a period of several weeks I was astounded at what I had missed in Kant and the literally crucial role he has played in the development not just of philosophy but of morality, politics and art as well.

Kant may not have had all the answers but I would go so far as to say this:

Understanding Kant is the key to understanding life, which is key to understanding what you're doing when you're running.

Of course there is more to life than running. There is literally a whole world of problems out there, many of which need urgently addressing. An understanding of what Kant was getting at with his transcendental idealist philosophy shows us that these problems are more important than we first assume, because, no matter how far away these problems are, they relate to us here now. And no matter how alien and unfamiliar a situation is, it is a human situation. We are at the centre of the universe, and the we know ourselves by our good works in the world out there (be that down the street, or on the surface of Mars).

Kant described his philosophy as effecting a 'Copernican revolution' because it was the first philosophy to try to put man as a conscious, rational, yet material and feeling being at the centre of everything.

By itself, running won't change the world, and neither will philosophy. But there is more to running than the physical act of putting on training shoes, moving rapidly along and getting both feet off the ground. Running obviously entails such mechanics, but it also invites the runner to be a thinker, to think about him or herself as a physical object and in doing so transcend his or her existence as a physical object. In this sense running is a vital corrective to the normal philosophical practice of sitting around (ok - reading and lecturing). Reading and lecturing is as essential to philosophy as the mechanical stuff is to running, but they are not sufficient on their own. There is a material/physical/feeling side to man that philosophy must acknowledge and build into its understanding of man. Philosophers need to acknowledge that our need for calories, and how we have organised (or failed to organise) ourselves socially to ensure those calories are provided, is every bit a factor in our understanding Man, as is our intellectual side. They need to know that our obsession with PBs (PRs for any Americans out there) is as significant as our obsession with God, freedom and immortality.

Running is the best activity to help you appreciate philosophy, and Kant's philosophy is the best for helping you appreciate how man the animal and man the thinker are intimately related.

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A clear and very useful introduction to Kant's philosophy, covering many of the epistemological and ethical basics, but none of the profound stuff, can be viewed here:

In this lecture, Roger Scruton, like so many others, makes the mistake of taking Kant at his literal word, instead of applying Kant's critical method to other philosophies and even Kant himself. This, after all, is how philosophy develops. Still, it's a good start for anyone wanting an introduction to the great man.