A Study Of Kant's View Of Substance In Critique Of Pure Reason

As a synthesizer in modern philosophy,Kant founded a unique transcendental system of philosophy by reconciling empiricism with rationalism.In transcendental philosophy,the general objects of human knowledge are divided into phenomena and noumena.The area of knowledge that can be understood is limited within experience.According to Kant,the traditional "substance" is thing-in-itself that belongs to the ontological realm.Although thing-in-itself cannot be recognized,it is closely related to our cognition.On the one hand,thing-in-itself,as the object of knowing,stimulates our sensory organs,then we can gain the objects of knowledge(appearances).On the other hand,as a spiritual thing,thing-in-itself is the support of human reason.So,we can get such abilities as sensibility,understanding and reason,and the cognitive forms a priori.Material thing-in-itself is the source of perceptual experience,and spiritual thing-in-itself is the support of knowledge a priori(form).In addition,Kant thought that there exists "the substance in the phenomenon "(die Substanz in der Erscheinung).It means that the “substance” as a category is the carrier of attribute and something that exists eternally.This persistence that never changes enables us to recognize the changes of phenomenon.Kant discussed the concept of "substance" from noumenon to phenomenon,which is an innovative view in the study of substance.The idea of this article is: In the first chapter of this paper,the author gave a brief introduction to empiricism and rationalism which have an important influence on Kant's transcendental philosophy.In the second chapter,the author analyzes Kant's critique of the traditional view of substance in the "transcendental dialectics " of Critique of Pure Reason.In this part,the author emphatically analyzes Kant's understanding and critique of traditional substance theory to show Kant's view of substance.In the third chapter,the author directly analyzes Kant's discourse about substance in Critique of Pure Reason,and then generalizes Kant's view of substance.This paper focuses on the second and third chapters,and they respectively analyze Kant's views of substance from the aspects of “breaking” and “establishing”.It should be pointed out that due to the limited time and energy,this paper only discusses the views of substance expressed in Critique of Pure Reason.