metonymy4u

Kant attempted to chart a course between the two competing epistemologies of 18th century western Europe: rationalism and skepticism. In expressing the errors of the latter, he discovered the errors of the former. The error of rationalism was to assume that because we cannot speak otherwise, therefore the world cannot be otherwise. The error of skepticism was to assume that because words are contingent events, therefore the world must be a contingent event. The errors of both camps mirror each other in this regard: reasoning from words to the world and vice versa. Rationalism saw words as absolute correlates of an absolute world, and skepticism saw words as contingent correlates of a contingent world. Kant’s solution was to learn to accept the inevitable limitations of words, which includes the limitation of not knowing, for example, whether we are indeed free, but also the social pressure to speak in no other way.