A View of Perception through Kantian Lenses: Toward a Reanalysis of Kant's Practical Philosophy in the Light of His Theoretical Assertions

In much of the same manner as Copernicus, Immanuel Kant provides for us a revolutionary way of conceptualizing being that shakes theoretical foundations along with having a very significant impact on practical matters. Kant tells us that: "Up to now it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to the objects...." Instead, what Kant suggests is that we must consider whether objects must conform to our cognition in attempting to understand both the self and objects. One can see from this that perception, for Kant, must take more of a cognitive role than more traditional stances. Perceptive capacities do not conform to the dimensions of what catch it, but catch only what conforms to the dimensions of cognition. From this, one can see a potential problem with Kant's theoretical assertions when considering Kant's practical thinking. Kant practical thinking insists that rational beings are to be treated as ends, never as means, and that any of our maxims are pursuable if and only if they can be followed by every other rational being. Yet, under the doctrine of objects conforming to cognition, how will rational beings be said to get beyond the subjectivity of their own individual cognition with regard to the recognition of humans in the order of fulfilling their practical demands? This is not a problem for the traditional view, as the rational being, in some way, conforms to the object. And as such, fulfilling practical obligations is a matter of recognizing what is there—a process of allowing one's perceptive faculty to conform to what is objectively beyond it. What is needed, in Kant's case however, is a way to get from the purely subjective nature of his theoretical assertions to the objectively necessary structure of his practical ones by way of perception.