KANT'S STATUS AND THE RISE OF JENA

One of the great and striking overall effects of Kant's philosophical achievement was the way in which he had managed to pull off one of the most influential and lasting redescriptions of the history of philosophy. In one fell swoop, Kant had managed to convince his public that the great body of the history of philosophy had consisted in one of two only partially successful (and necessarily finally unsatisfactory) approaches to human knowledge and action: on the one hand, there were the rationalists who claimed that we know nothing of things-in-themselves except what we discover through pure reason and logic; on the other hand, there were the empiricists who said that we know nothing of things-in-themselves except that which we gather from our experience of them. Kant's solution was to say that both camps were partially right and partially wrong, and that his “critical” philosophy was the correct synthesis between them. Not only did it offer a better theory, it also explained why there had only been a see-saw and stand-off between rationalism and empiricism until the Kantian philosophy had been itself developed.

Kant's assertion of the autonomy of reason – of its capacity to set standards not only for itself but for everything else – had some clear and immediate practical implications. In Kant's day, the theological faculty typically held sway over the other faculties and particularly over philosophy.