감성과 오성 (understanding) 그리고 이성 (reason)

à 인식 능력

오성(understanding)

[출처: 동녘, 철학대사전]

객관적 실재를 개념을 통해 파악하는 이론적이고 실천적인 인간의 능력. 이러한 의미에서 오성적 사유는 논증적 인식과 동일하다. 칸트는 오성과 이성을 엄격히 구분하였다. 그에 따르면 오성은 “표상 자체를 산출하는 능력, 혹은 인식의 <자발성>”이다. 오성은 개념, 즉 범주와 판단 및 규칙들의 도움으로 “감성적 직관의 대상을 <사유>하는 능력”이다. 그에 반해 이성은 칸트에 따르면 무제약자나 총체성 같은 이념의 능력이다. 오성이 개개의 경험에 관계하는 반면에 이성은 “경험의 절대적 전체”에 관계한다. 칸트에 있어서 인식 능력으로서의 이성은 오성의 상위에 있다.

일반적으로 ‘오성’과 ‘이성’은 모두 감성과 구별되는 인간의 본래적인 정신적 활동으로서 동일한 의미로 사용된다. 

[출처: 동녘, 철학대사전]

The nature of reason is one of the central themes of philosophy, and has provoked continuous controversy for almost two and a half millennia. There are, however, some fixed points in this controversy which help situate Kant's contribution. The first, which is clearly evident in Aristotle, is a tendency to move from the act of reasoning to a power or property of the soul which reasons. This distinction between reasoning and reason appears throughout the history of philosophy, apparent in Aquinas's distinction between the power or faculty which is reason and reason as argumentation, as well as in Descartes' descriptions of reason in the Discourse on Method as both 'the power to judge correctly...naturally equal in all men'(1637, p.4) and as a general 'reasoning about affairs'(p.9). A further abiding characteristic of reason is its elevated character and association with sight and light. Aristotle described it by means of the analogy 'as sight is in the eye, so is reason in the soul'. Descartes habitually describes it in terms of the 'natural light' of the soul. Possession of reason is also universally taken as the defining characteristic of a human being and the main specific difference between it and animals, or, in Descartes' words, 'it is the only thing which makes us men, and distinguishes us from the beasts'

Kant's use of reason may be broadly situated within these parameters of debate, although he makes some significant departures from the tradition. In the pre-critical "The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures (1762, Kant)" it is reason which distinguishes human beings from animals, and consists in a fundamental faculty of judgment. The faculty of judgment is 'reason' in a broad sense, but within this definition Kant follows the Wolffian distinction between understanding and 'reason' in a narrow sense. He observes that 'both consist in the capacity to judge' but describes understanding as the faculty of distinct cognition and mediate judgment, and reason in the narrow sense as 'the faculty of syllogistic reasoning' by which 'one draws an inference' (The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures, p.59, p.103. 1762, Kant). These distinctions between reason in the broad and narrow senses and between reason and understanding are carried over into "Critique of Pure Reason", as is the view that reason defines what is proper to human beings.

Although Kant maintains many features of the Wolffian distinction between "The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures" and "Critique of Pure Reason", he strikingly extends the rage and significance of reason. This is largely the outcome of his systematic exploration of relationship between human reason and human freedom. The alignment of reason and freedom had been proposed by Renaissance humanists such as Pico della Mirandola and Pomponazzi, but is was Kant who revealed that reason and freedom could as easily undermine as support each other. This insight informed his distinction between the theoretical and practical applications of reason. From the standpoint of reason, human beings are free of the determining influence of the world of sense; this allows them to act according to principles which are independent of nature; but it also encourages them to make inferences about the world which exceed the limits of the understanding. Reason allied with freedom is excessive, pursuing the unconditioned, breaking all limits, for 'it is in the power of freedom to pass beyond any and every specified limit' (Critique of Pure Reason 374). The implications of this power for theoretical reason are discussed in Critique of Pure Reason under the title of the "Transcendental Dialectic', while the quite distinct practical and aesthetic implications are considered in Critique of Practical Reason and the 'Analytic of the Sublime' in Critique of Judgment.