2. Philosophy

And basically, what then emerged in Kantian philosophy is nothing other than, I would say, the last consequence of this scholastic problem. It is just that Kant arrived at his formulation of the scholastic problem in a peculiar way: in the age in which Kant, as a young man, was pursuing his philosophical studies, a somewhat diluted Leibnizianism prevailed in the circles in which Kant was pursuing his studies. Leibnizianism, which is something great in its own way, albeit somewhat abstract, and which still has a connection to the spirit of reality, was philosophically sublimated and diluted in Wolffianism, which formed the stage of Kant's youth. During this time, people were already dealing with the demands of mathematizing science, with the demands of science, which is precisely composed of the results of external observation of the world. But out of the old habit that man has something to say when something is being determined about the world, one had established the broad doctrine of reason alongside this empirical science, alongside this science of experience. It was decreed that uncertain judgments can be gained through experience, through empiricism, about everything that is transitory; but these judgments are directed only at the transitory and are uncertain. One cannot know whether what one recognizes through observation and intellectual knowledge about any fact of the transitory world must necessarily be so for all time. We cannot even know that the sun must rise every morning, because we have only the one piece of empirical evidence that it has risen every morning so far. From this we can conclude that it will also rise in the future; but it is just an empirical conclusion. Beyond this empirical science, Wolffianism, and Kant in his youth, were looking for a rational science, in complete harmony with Wolffianism. It is characteristic that one of Wolff's books is called: “Rational Thoughts about God, the World, and the Soul of Man, and about All Things in General.”