Immanuel Kant's Teaching | 1st about psychology. Directory of ...

Immanuel Kant knew that his students needed to learn to think for themselves and he reasoned that it was how philosophy was being communicated that induced students to learn critical thinking skills or to just mimic their professors. It was his desire to educate them to philosophize and not just memorize a philosophical system. He articulated the difference between a scholastic type of education and a cosmopolitan type of education. He argued: ?one must differentiate between two types of learning: there are minute sciences, which are useless for human beings, and formerly there were philosophers, whose whole science consisted in exceeding each other in ingeniousness, these were called Scholastici; their art was science for the university, but no enlightenment for everyday life could be acquired through this. He could be a great man, but only for the university, without giving the world some use for his knowledge? (Starke, Menschenkunde, p. 1). The scholastic style of teaching was fastidious, small-minded, and pedantic.

Students learning from scholastic teachers were begin educated to memorize philosophical concepts and regurgitate what they were learning. Kant held that this type of philosophy was founded in historical ways of knowing (cognitio ex datis) instead of begin founded in rational principles (cognitio ex principiis) since the system was already a historical fact. He used Christian Wolff as an example and argued: ?Wolff was a speculative?philosopher?he was actually not a philosopher at all, but rather a great artificer [Vernunftkuenstler], like many others still are, for the intellectual curiosity of human beings? (Philosophische Enzyklopaedie, Gesammelte Schriften, XXIX, 8). Immanuel Kant asserted: ?Anyone, therefore, who has learned (in the strict sense of the term) a system of philosophy, such as that of Wolff, although they may have all its principles, explanations, and proofs, together with the formal divisions of the whole body of doctrine, in their heads, and, so to speak, at their fingertips, have no more than a complete historical knowledge of the Wolffian philosophy? (Critique of Pure Reason, B 864).

Immanuel Kant observed that students learning in this way could cleverly use the concepts of the system but that their chatter was also ?blinder than any other self-conceit and as incurable as ignorance? (Nachricht, Gesammelte Schriften, II, 305). The students were merely committing the ideas and system to memory but were not thinking critically. They spoke eloquently, but were not able to use the ideas creatively and in new contexts. The students weren?t acquiring insights into philosophy but came off as learned [Gelehrt].

Thus, Kant believed he should teach students to philosophize and not just learn about philosophy (Nachricht, Gesammelte Schriften, II, 306). He believed the cure for this was his cosmopolitan philosophy. He introduced physical geography and anthropology as disciplines that were to educate students to methodical thinking. The physical geography lectures required that students examine nature using effective causality, while anthropology demanded that students make use of final causality. Effective causality is the type of causality we think of in the natural sciences, while final causality is what we find in the human sciences. Effective causality requires that the cause comes before the effect, however final causality has the cause come after the effect. For instance, a storm which comes first causes trees to fall, while wanting to sail a boat (the end) causes us to fell a tree in the second case. The sailing comes after the felling. Both kinds of causality are constructed by a nexus which can be methodologically articulated.

Kant was able to teach his students to reflect on their experience methodically through these two courses and hence he discouraged them from memorizing philosophy. Students could take what they were learning and apply it to new circumstances with exciting outcomes. They could find natural causes in nature and purposes in their lives. Both physical geography and anthropology lead students to meditate on the world or on other human beings and this makes imitation impossible. Hence Immanuel Kant valued critical thinking and he risked teaching it to his students at the Koenigsberg University. What to know more? Read my book, Kant?s Pragmatic Anthropology which you can buy from Amazon or Abebooks.

Learn more about Immanuel Kant. Stop by Holly L Wilson?s site where you can find out all about critical thinking and what it can do for you.

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Source: http://1aboutpsychology.com/2012/reference-and-education/immanuel-kants-teaching/

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