Kant, Rousseau, and Locke: philosophical comparisons

Kant, Rousseau, Locke

In his book Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, how does Kant apply these concepts? Discuss Kant's EACH use of: - sensibility - transcendental idealism - objective reality - understanding - Copernican revolution

The philosophical concept of transcendental idealism holds that the subjective qualities of human perception affect how we perceive certain objects, and experience is not simply grounded in the qualities of 'things in and of themselves.' We perceive objects through our sensibilities and our sensibilities are not the same as the objective reality of a substance. "Kant's idea is that objects are given through the sensibility (in intuitions), they are thought through the understanding (through concepts), and our experience of them comes from judgments (which involve the synthesis of intuitions and concepts in the unity of apperception). (For Kant, intuitions are representations of empirical objects, as -- indeterminate -- appearances)" ("Sensibility," Kant Dictionary, 2012).

The idea that our perceptions do not perfectly adhere to the material existence of the world Kant calls a Copernican Revolution in the history of philosophy, i.e. A change as seismic as that wrought by Copernicus' idea that the earth orbited around the sun, versus the sun orbiting around the earth. Before it was postulated that it was the external world that was the primary focus of philosophy, but Kant shifted that focus inward: "Up to now it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to the objects; but all attempts to find out something about them a priori through concepts that would extend our cognition have, on this presupposition, come to nothing" stated Kant (Rohlf 2010). It should be noted that Kant's view is not purely relativistic or postmodern -- he does not believe that no real objective reality is extant, and only our perceptions are valid. However, Kant stated that human faculties are invariably in dialogue with the exterior world, and there is no way to filter out the influence of those preexisting mental structures: "sensibility and understanding work together to construct cognition of the sensible world, which therefore conforms to the a priori forms that are supplied by our cognitive faculties" (Rohlf 2010).

Q2. Adam Smith argued, in the book the Theory of Moral Sentiment, that while human beings are selfish, envious, ambitious and greedy, they have tendencies in tension with these, and hence a state of happiness can still be a human achievement and generally do for many. Critically discuss.

In Theory of Moral Sentiment, Adam Smith offers what initially seems to be a very pessimistic view of human nature. He states that human beings are by nature self-interested and will do what they can to advance their personal interests in society. But this is not necessarily a bad thing, it should be noted. In fact, Smith's famous espousal of free market capitalism could be seen as a paradigm of self-interest. In the economic marketplace, persons advancing their own self-interest eventually create an equilibrium which allows the needs of every man to be satisfied. This can be seen in the classical laws of supply and demand, which suggest that as demand increases, price increases. But as price goes up, demand goes down. Eventually a 'happy medium' or an optimal equilibrium price is attained, until market conditions change.