On The Relations Between Kant's Theory Of Knowledge And Logic

Although western philosophy has been closely connected with logic from ancient Greece, Kant may be the first person who clearly unifies logic with the theory of knowledge. The Critique of Pure Reason is a book which dissects mankind's ability of knowledge, and its duty is to find essential factors and principles of knowledge which are used to explain the prior conditions of the possibility of human's knowledge. From the frame work of the book, we can see clearly that the transcendental logic is the main body and the most important part in the book. In fact, Kant has used the logic which is originated by himself to construct his theory of knowledge which conversely provides the foundation for the construction of the transcendental logic. Kant's theory of knowledge is inseparable from logic, and they are unified. There are many researches about Kant's theory of knowledge in recent years, and they also refer to the relations between Kant's theory of knowledge and logic to a certain extent, but they don't clarify these relations clearly. The author will inquire further into the relations between Kant's theory of knowledge and logic on the base of resent researches. This thesis is divided into seven parts.Firstly, the author reviews Aristole's thought about the relations between the logic and the theory of knowledge in the first part, and explains a fact that Kant is not the first person who uses logic in the theory of knowledge. In the second part, the author introduces Kant's viewpoints about logic and the theory of knowledge generally, and expounds the evolutional condition of logic before Kant and Kant's analysis about the universal logic. In this part, the author also analyses the connotation of the transcendental logic and its characteristics, and the theoretical sources of Kant's theory of knowledge and the meaning of Copernican Revolution. In the third part, the author interprets the creative feature of the transcendental logic firstly, and then explains the inevitable connection between the transcendental logic and intuition. In the fourth part, the author mainly expounds the meanings of the pure concepts of understanding and the concepts'system. In this part, the author also expounds the relations between the pure concepts of understanding and knowledge, and clearly defines the function of the concepts in the formation of knowledge. In the fifth part, the author expounds the fresh orientation of judgment in the theory of knowledge and the relations between Kant's three main judgments and knowledge. In this part, the author also expounds the relations between the ability to judge correctly and knowledge, and the question about the highest ground of how the knowledge will be possible, namely about how the synthetic a priori judgments, will be possible. All of these testify the relations between the judgment theory and the theory of knowledge. In the sixth part, the author introduces the rational deduction's definition and its characteristics and how we can deduce transcendental ideas from rational deductions. And in this part, the author introduces the relations between transcendental ideas and knowledge, and thinks that the rational deductions don't form knowledge, but the transcendental ideas which are deduced from them can supply the highest unified direction for the use of understanding, thus the transcendental ideas finish the unity of all knowledge. In the final part, the author discusses the influence of Kant's viewpoints on Fichte's and Hegel's philosophies and analytic philosophy.