Abstract

What can we know? We know many things about the world around us: whether it is raining outside, the result of last night’s game, or how vaccines work. But we also want to know more. For example, we may want to know the ultimate origin of the universe, whether God exists, or whether there are such things as souls. Philosophers have long asked this type of questions — questions that concern a kind of knowledge that goes beyond our experience. A wide range of answers (often contradicting each other) have been endlessly debated. Dissatisfied with this state of inquiry, Kant proposes a revolution in philosophy, which does not consist in devising new answers to these questions, but rather in analyzing our own capacity for knowledge. Such an analysis aims to shed light on the limits of our cognitive faculties and to reveal their true potential. In this article, we will see how Kant’s philosophy offers a revolutionary approach to our deep thirst for knowledge.