Awakening From His Dogmatic Slumbers: Kant and His Development of a Theory of A Priori Knowledge

In this final episode of a two part series, I look at Immanuel Kant’s response to David Hume’s skepticism about cause-effect relationships. Kant develops a theory of an a priori cognitive framework through which an individual views the world and which structure our very perceptions of reality. This framework is an ambitious undertaking and defines Kant’s status as one of the giants of the philosophical world. But it comes at a cost. Although it outlines the necessary cognitive structure that must exist if we are to have any  experiences, it must accept that we cannot view reality as it is in itself due to this framework thereby creating a distance between the  objects of the world and our experiences of them.