Immanuel Kant citáty

page 6

„Všetko naše poznanie začína zmyslami, pokračuje pochopením a končí dôvodom.“

„Človek, ktorý prejavuje krutosť voči zvieratám, nie je o nič menej zatvrdnutý ani voči ľuďom. Ľudské srdce môžeme spoznávať aj vo vzťahu k zvieratám.“

„Muž je žiarlivý, keď miluje; žena i keď nemiluje.“

„Keby ľudia boli schopní navzájom si čítať myšlienky, vyhýbali by sa jeden druhému.“

„Ženy sú ako španielske domy. Majú veľa dverí a málo okien. Je ľahšie vniknúť do ich sŕdc, ako do nich nahliadnuť.“

„Proti trampotám života dal Boh človeku tri veci - nádej, spánok a smiech.“

„Nebo obdarilo ľudí na zmiernenie útrap života tromi vecami - nádejou, spánkom a smiechom.“

„Najmenej sa boja smrti tí, ktorých život má najväčšiu cenu.“

„Vnímajme život ako detskú hru, v ktorej ide len o čestnosť, dobré srdce, a povinnosť voči sebe samému.“

„Pozitívne dobro, ktoré môžu vlády vykonať, je obmedzené na odstraňovanie prekážok k dobrému životu.“

„Človeka, ktorý si zlomil nohu, môžeme v jeho nešťastí trochu utešiť, keď mu pripomenieme, že si mohol rovnako dobre zlomiť väzy.“

„Ženská osobnosť je ako more - rozochveje ju najslabší závan a pritom unesie najťažšie bremená.“

„Keď sa úprimne a dôkladne porovnávame s mravným zákonom, s jeho posvätnosťou a prísnosťou, musí z toho nevyhnutne plynúť opravdivá pokora. Avšak to, že sme schopní takéhoto vnútorného zákonodarstva, že fyzický človek sa cíti nútený uctiť si vo svojej vlastnej osobe morálneho človeka, ho zároveň povznáša a dáva mu to najvyššie sebaocenie ako pocit jeho vnútornej hodnoty, na základe ktorej nie je za žiadnu cenu podkupný a má nepomíňajúcu sa hodnotu, čo mu vštepuje úctu voči sebe samému.“

„Jednou z najväčších a najčistejších radostí je oddych po práci.“

„Prvou starosťou človeka by nemalo byť šťastie, ale to, aby bol toho šťastia hodný.“

„Keď sa to vezme v celku, čím sú ľudia civilizovanejší, tým sú väčší herci.“

„Aj tá najúprimnejšia žena skrýva na dne svojho srdca nejaké tajomstvo.“

„Neschopnosť utvoriť si úsudok je vlastne to, čomu hovoríme hlúposť a proti tomuto neduhu niet pomoci.“

„Nevyhnutnými podmienkami čistého rozumu sú - Boh, sloboda a nesmrteľnosť.“

„Nie sme na svete preto, aby sme boli šťastní, ale preto, aby sme plnili svoje povinnosti.“

„Čím máme viac lásky, tým sa ľahšie pretĺkame svetom.“

„Človek je jediný živočích, ktorý musí pracovať.“

„Prečítal som v živote mnoho múdrych a dobrých kníh. Ani v jednej som však nenašiel nič, čo by ma tak uspokojilo a potešilo moje srdce, ako tieto slová 23. žalmu: "Ty, Pane, si so mnou."“

„Vedieť, načo by bolo rozumné sa opýtať, je veľký a potrebný dôkaz inteligencie a pochopenia.“

„Človek sa nemôže stať človekom iba vychovaním.“

„Lekári si myslia, že ktovieako pomohli chorému, keď chorobe dali vhodné meno.“

„Ušľachtilý človek trpí utrpením druhých, ako by bol za nich zodpovedný.“

„Dobré činy len kvôli návyku prestávajú byť cnosťou. Dobro je len to, čo robíme zámerne.“

„Bez entuziazmu sa vo svete nič veľkého nevykonalo.“

„Milovať blížneho znamená rád plniť každú povinnosť, ktorú voči nemu mám.“

„Je možné, že nie všetko je pravda, čo človek za pravdu považuje, ale vo všetkom, čo hovorí, musí byť pravdovravný.“

„Manželstvo, to je spojenie dvoch osôb rozličného pohlavia k celoživotnému vzájomnému vlastnení svojich sexuálnych vlastností.“

„Môže byť niečo zvrátenejšie, ako hovoriť deťom o inom svete, keď sotva prišli na tento svet?“

„Múdreho možno ľahko presvedčiť, hlupáka len horko-ťažko prehovoriť.“

„Na človeku je jedine dobré - jeho dobrá vôľa.“

„Nedospelosť je neschopnosť používať svoj rozum bez cudzieho vedenia.“

„Niet nič praktickejšie ako dobrá teória.“

„Okrem dobrého úmyslu na svete niet ničoho, čo by bolo možno akceptovať bez výhrady.“

„Ženy jsou jako španělské domy. Mají mnoho dveří a málo oken. Je snažší uniknout do jejich srdcí, než do nich nahlédnout.“

„Vychovávanie je najväčší a najťažší problém, ktorý je možno človeku uložiť.“

„Nemáme do činenia s inými predmetmi ako tými, ktoré patria k možnej skúsenosti, lebo ak nám nemôžu byť dané v nijakej skúsenosti, potom sú pre nás ničím.“

„Akákoľvek sila sa pozná len vďaka prekážkam, ktoré dokáže prekonať.“

„Maj aj odvahu používať svoj vlastný rozum.“

„Posudzuj podľa takých zásad, o ktorých si presvedčený, že by bolo dobré, aby sa stali všeobecným zákonom.“

„Šťastie nie je ideálom rozumu, ale predstavivosti.“

“A metaphysics of morals is therefore indispensably necessary, not merely because of a motive to speculation — for investigating the source of the practical basic principles that lie a priori in our reason — but also because morals themselves remain subject to all sorts of corruption as long as we are without that clue and supreme norm by which to appraise them correctly…”

“The body is a temple.”

“I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.”

“Newton… (after having remarked that geometry only requires two of the mechanical actions which it postulates, namely, to describe a straight line and a circle) says: geometry is proud of being able to achieve so much while taking so little from extraneous sources. One might say of metaphysics, on the other hand: it stands astonished, that with so much offered it by pure mathematics it can effect so little.”

“The means employed by Nature to bring about the development of all the capacities of men is their antagonism in society, so far as this is, in the end, the cause of a lawful order among men.”

“The third of this kind of principles is : matter neither originates nor perishes; all the changes in the world concern form only; a postulate which on the recommendation of common sense has spread through all philosophical schools, not because it is to be taken as having been found so, or as having been demonstrated by arguments a priori, but because if we were to admit that matter itself is fleeting and transitory, nothing at all that is stable and lasting would be left any longer to serve for the explication of phenomena according to universal and perpetual laws, and hence nothing at all would be left for the exercise of the intellect.”

“To these spurious principles must be added some others of great affinity with them… First, that by which we assume that everything in the universe is done according to the order of nature, which principle by Epicurus was proclaimed without any restriction, and by all other philosophers unanimously with extremely rare exceptions, not to be admitted but from supreme necessity.”

“The spurious axioms of the third kind from conditions proper to the subject whence they are transferred rashly to the object are plentiful, not, as in those of the Second Class, because the only way to the intellectual concept lies through the sensuous data, but because only by aid of the latter can the concept be applied to that which is given by experience, that is, can we know whether something is contained under a certain intellectual concept or not. To this class belongs the threadbare one of the schools: whatever exists contingently does at some time not exist. This spurious principle springs from the poverty of the intellect, having insight frequently into the nominal, rarely into the real, marks of contingency or necessity.”

“The prejudices of the second species, since they impose upon the intellect by the sensual conditions restricting the mind if it wishes in certain cases to attain to what is intellectual, lurk more deeply. One of them is that which affects knowledge of quantity, the other that affecting knowledge of qualities generally. The former is: every actual multiplicity can be given numerically, and hence, every infinite quantity; the latter, whatever is impossible contradicts itself. In either of them the concept of time, it is true, does not enter into the very notion of the predicate, nor is it attributed as a qualification to the subject. But yet it serves as a means for forming an idea of the predicate, and thus, being a condition, affects the intellectual concept of the subject to the extent that the latter is only attained by its aid.”

“A spurious axiom of the first class is: Whatever is, is somewhere and sometime.”

“The method of the science not being practiced much nowadays, except what logic prescribes to all sciences generally, that fitted for the peculiar nature of metaphysics being simply ignored, it is no wonder that those who everlastingly turn the Sisyphean stone of this inquiry do not seem so far to have made much progress. Though here I neither can nor will expatiate upon so important and extensive a subject, I shall briefly shadow forth what constitutes no despicable part of this method, namely, the infection between sensuous and intellectual cognition, not only as creeping in on those incautious in the application of principles, but even producing spurious principles under the appearance of axioms.”

“The use of the intellect in the sciences whose primitive concepts as well as axioms are given by sensuous intuition is only logical, that is, by it we only subordinate cognitions to one another according to their relative universality conformably to the principle of contradiction, phenomena to more general phenomena, and consequences of pure intuition to intuitive axioms. But in pure philosophy, such as metaphysics, in which the use of the intellect in respect to principles is real, that is to say, where the primary concept of things and relations and the very axioms are given originally by the pure intellect itself, and not being intuitions do not enjoy immunity from error, the method precedes the whole science, and whatever is attempted before its precepts are thoroughly discussed and firmly established is looked upon as rashly conceived and to be rejected among vain instances of mental playfulness.”

“If it were right to overstep a little the limits of apodictic certainty befitting metaphysics, it would seem worth while to trace out some things pertaining not merely to the laws but even to the causes of sensuous intuition, which are only intellectually knowable. Of course the human mind is not affected by external things, and the world does not lie open to its insight infinitely, except as far as itself together with all other things is sustained by the same infinite power of one. Hence it does not perceive external things but by the presence of the same common sustaining cause; and hence space, which is the universal and necessary condition of the joint presence of everything known sensuously, may be called the phenomenal omnipresence, for the cause of the universe is not present to all things and everything, as being in their places, but their places, that is the relations of the substances, are possible, because it is intimately present to all. Furthermore, since the possibility of the changes and successions of all things whose principle as far as sensuously known resides in the concept of time, supposes the continuous existence of the subject whose opposite states succeed; that whose states are in flux, lasting not, however, unless sustained by another; the concept of time as one infinite and immutable in which all things are and last, is the phenomenal eternity of the general cause} But it seems more cautious to hug the shore of the cognitions granted to us by the mediocrity of our intellect than to be carried out upon the high seas of such mystic investigations, like Malebranche, whose opinion that we see all things in God is pretty nearly what has here been expounded.”

“Several actual worlds without one another are not, therefore, impossible by the very concept, as Wolf hastily concluded from the notion of a complex or multiplicity which he deemed sufficient to a whole, as such, but only on condition that there exist but one necessary cause of all things. If several are admitted, several worlds without one another will be possible in the strictest metaphysical sense.”

“A whole from necessary substances is impossible. The whole, therefore, of substances is a whole of contingent things, and the world consists essentially of only contingent things.”

“The sham cause in physical influence consists in rashly assuming that the commerce of substance and transitive forces is sufficiently knowable from their mere existence. Hence it is not so much a system as rather the neglect of all philosophical system as a superfluity in the argument. Freeing the concept from this defect, we shall have a species of commerce alone deserving to be called real, and from which the whole constituting the world merits being called real, and not ideal or imaginary.”

“The question of the principle of the form of the intelligible world turns, therefore, upon making apparent in what manner it is possible for several substances to be in mutual commerce, and for this reason to pertain to the same whole, which is called world. We do not here consider the world, let it be understood, as to matter, that is, as to the nature of the substances of which it consists, whether they be material or immaterial, but as to form, that is to say, how among several things taken separately a connection, and among them all, totality can have place.”

“Space is employed as the type even of the concept of time itself, representing it by a line, and its limits — moments — by points. Time, on the other had, approaches more to a universal and rational concept, comprising under its relations all things whatsoever, to wit, space itself, and besides, those accidents which are not comprehended in the relations of space, such as the thoughts of the soul. Again, time, besides this, though it certainly does not dictate the laws of reason, yet constitutes the principal conditions tinder favor of which the mind compares its notions according to the laws of reason. Thus, I cannot judge what is impossible except by predicating a and not-a of the same subject at the same time.”

“Nature, therefore, is subject with absolute precision to all the precepts of geometry as to all the properties of space there demonstrated, this being the subjective condition, not hypothetically but intuitively given, of every phenomenon in which nature can ever be revealed to the senses.”

“The concept of space, therefore, is a pure intuition, being a singular concept, not made up by sensations, but itself the fundamental form of all external sensation.”

“The concept of space is not abstracted from external sensations.”

“It is absurd to excite reason against the primary postulates of pure time, as, for example, continuity, etc., since they follow from laws prior and superior to which nothing is found, and since reason herself in the use of the principle of contradiction cannot dispense with the support of this concept, so primitive and original is it.”

“Let the letters a b c denote the three angular points of a rectilineal triangle. If the point did move continuously over the lines ab, bc, ca, that is, over the perimeter of the figure, it would be necessary for it to move at the point b in the direction ab, and also at the same point b in the direction bc. These motions being diverse, they cannot be simultaneous. There-fore, the moment of presence of the movable point at vertex b, considered as moving in the direction ab, is different from the moment of presence of the movable point at the same vertex b, considered as moving in the same direction bc. But between two moments there is time; therefore, the movable point is present at point b for some time, that is, it rests. Therefore it does not move continuously, which is contrary to the assumption. The same demonstration is valid for motion over any right lines including an assignable angle. Hence a body does not change its direction in continuous motion except by following a line no part of which is straight, that is, a curve, as Leibnitz maintained.”

“Phenomena of the external sense are examined and set forth in physics; those of the internal sense in empirical psychology. Pure mathematics considers space in geometry and time in pure mechanics. To these is to be added a certain concept, intellectual to be sure in itself, but whose becoming actual in the concrete requires the auxiliary notions of time and space in the successive addition and simultaneous juxtaposition of separate units, which is the concept of number treated in arithmetic.”

“Now the maximum of perfection is called ideal, by Plato, Idea — for instance, his Idea of a Republic — and is the principle of all that is contained under the general notion of any perfection, inasmuch as the lesser grades are not thought determinable but by limiting the maximum. But God, the Ideal of perfection, and hence the principle of cognition, is also, as existing really, the principle of the creation of all perfection.”

“The sensuous may be exceedingly distinct, while intellectual concepts are extremely confused. The former we observe in the prototype of sensuous knowledge geometry; the latter, in the organon of all intellectual concepts, metaphysics. It is evident how much toil the latter is expending to dispel the fogs of confusion darkening the common intellect, though not always with the happy success of the former science.”

“Percepts and phenomena which precedes the logical use of the intellect is called appearance, while the reflex knowledge originating from several appearances compared by the intellect is called experience.”

“The force of the word World, as commonly used, of itself falls in with us. For no one will attribute accidents to the World as parts, but as determinations, states; hence the so-called world of the ego, unrestrained by the single substance and its accidents, is not very appositely called a World, unless, perhaps, an imaginary one.”

“As the analysis of a substantial composite terminates only in a part which is not a whole, that is, in a simple part, so synthesis terminates only in a whole which is not a part, that is, the world.”