DiText
Dagobert D. Runes, Dictionary of Philosophy, 1942.
A| B| C| D| E| F| G| H| I| J| K| L| M| N| O| P| Q| R| S| T| U| V| W| X| Y| Z

K


Kala: (Skr.) Art-creation, authorship, e.g., as one of the aspects of Shiva's progressive world creation. See Kancuka. -- K.F.L.
Kala: (Skr.) Time, variously conceived in Indian philosophy. See e.g., Astikdya, Dravya, Kancuka. -- K.F.L.
Kalanos: (Grecized from Skr. kalyana) A Hindu philosopher who lived at the court of Alexander the Great while in India and finally mounted his own funeral pile. -- K.F.L.
Kalology: The study of the beauties of sensible objects and of character combined. (Montague.) -- H.H.
Kames, Henry Home: (1696-1782) He was a well known Scotch lawyer of his day who later became one of the lords of justiciary and sat as a judge in the court of session. He became entangled in a free will controversy after the publication of his "Principles of Morality and Natural Religion." His "Elements of Criticism" is a widely known classic in the field of aesthetics. -- L.E-D.
Kami: (Japanese) Originally denoting anything that inspires and overawes man with a sense of holiness, the word assumed a meaning in Japanese equivalent to spirit (also ancestral spirit), divinity, and God. It is a central concept in the pre-Confucian and pre-Buddhistic native religion which holds the sun supreme and still enjoys national support, while it may also take on a more abstract philosophic significance. -- K.F.L.
Kant, Immanuel: (1724-1804), born and died in Königsberg. Studied the Leibniz-Wolffian philosoohv under Martin Knutzen. Also studied and taught astronomy (see Kant-Laplace hypothesis), mechanics and theology. The influence of Newton's physics and Lockean psychology vied with his Leibnizian training. Kant's personal life was that of a methodic pedant, touched with Rousseauistic piety and Prussian rigidity. He scarcely travelled 40 miles from Königsberg in his life-time, disregarded music, had little esteem for women, and cultivated few friends apart from the Prussian officials he knew in Königsberg. In 1755, he became tutor in the family of Count Kayserling. In 1766, he was made under-librarian, and in 1770 obtained the chair of logic and metaphysics at the University of Königsberg. Heine has made classical the figure of Kant appearing for his daily walk with clock-like regularity. But his very wide reading compensated socially for his narrow range of travel, and made him an interesting coversationalist as well as a successful teacher.
Kantianism: The philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804); also called variously, the critical philosophy, criticism, transcendentalism, or transcendental idealism. Its roots lay in the Enlightenment; but it sought to establish a comprehensive method and doctrine of experience which would undercut the rationalistic metaphysics of the 17th and 18th centuries. In an early "pre-critical" period, Kant's interest centered in evolutionary, scientific cosmology. He sought to describe the phenomena of Nature, organic as well as inorganic, as a whole of interconnected natural laws. In effect he elaborated and extended the natural philosophy of Newton in a metaphysical context drawn from Christian Wolff and indirectly from Leibniz.

But Kant's versatile, analytical mind could not rest here; and gradually his ideas underwent a radical transformation. He questioned the assumption, common to dogmatic metaphysics, that reality can be apprehended in and through concepts. He was helped to this view by the study of Leibniz's Nouveaux Essais (first published in 1765), and the skepticism and empiricism of Hume, through which, Kant stated, he was awakened from his "dogmatic slumbers". He cast about for a method by which the proper limits and use of reason could be firmly established. The problem took the form: By what right and within what limits may reason make synthetic, a priori judgments about the data of sense?

By 1770, the beginning of his "critical" period, Kant had an answer which he confidently expected would revolutionize philosophy. First dimly outlined in the Inaugural Dissertation (1770), and elaborated in great detail in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781 and 1787), the answer consisted in the critical or transcendental method. The typical function of reason, on Kant's view, is relating or synthesizing the data of sense. In effecting any synthesis the mind relies on the validity of certain principles, such as causality, which, as Hume had shown, cannot be inductive generalizations from sense data, yet are indispensable in any account of "experience" viewed as a connected, significant whole. If the necessary, synthetic principles cannot be derived from sense data proper, then, Kant argued, they must be "a priori" -- logically prior to the materials which they relate. He also called these formal elements "transcendental", by which he meant that, while they are indubitably in experience viewed as a connected whole, they transcend or are distinct from the sensuous materials in source and status. In the Critique of Pure Reason -- his "theoretical philosophy" -- Kant undertakes a complete inventory and "deduction" of all synthetic, a priori, transcendental forms employed in the knowledge of Nature. The first part, the "Transcendental Aesthetic", exhibits the two forms or "intuitions" (Anschauungen) of the sensibility: space and time. Knowledge of Nature, however varied its sense content, is necessarily always of something in space and time; and just because these are necessary conditions of any experience of Nature, space and time cannot be objective properties of things-in-themselves, but must be formal demands of reason. Space and time are "empirically real", because they are present in actual experience; but they are "transcendentally ideal", since they are forms which the mind "imposes" on the data of sense.

In the second part, the "Transcendental Logic", Kant treats of the synthetic forms of the understanding. (Verstand), which he calls "categories" or "pure principles of the understanding". Of these he recognizes twelve in all, arranged in groups of threes under the heads: quantity, quality, relation and modality. The sensuous materials embedded in the forms of sensibility constitute percepts, while reason, through the understanding, supplies the concepts and principles by means of which percepts are synthesized into meaningful judgments of Nature. In the celebrated "deduction of the categories", Kant shows that without these forms there could be no knowledge or experience of Nature. Just therein and only therein lies their va1idity.

But by the same token, as Kant now shows in the third part on "Transcendental Dialectic", the forms of sensibility and understanding cannot be employed beyond experience in order to define the nature of such metaphysical entities as God, the immortal soul, and the World conceived as a totality. If the forms are valid in experience only because they are necessary conditions of experience, there is no way of judging their applicability to objects transcending experience. Thus Kant is driven to the denial of the possibility of a science of metaphysics. But though judgments of metaphysics are indemonstrable, they are not wholly useless. The "Ideas of Pure Reason" (Vernunft) have a "regulative use", in that they point to general objects which they cannot, however, constitute. Theoretical knowledge is limited to the realm of experience; and within this realm we cannot know "things-in-themselves", but only the way in which things appear under a priori forms of reason; we know things, in other words, as "phenomena."

But reason is not limited to its theoretical use. Besides objects of cognition and thought, there are also those of will and feeling. Kant's "practical philosophy", the real foundation of his system of transcendental idealism, centers in a striking doctrine of freedom. Even in its theoretical use. reason is a law-giver to Nature, in that the data of sense must conform to the forms of the sensibility and understanding if Nature is to be known at all. But in moral experience, as Kant shows in the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), the will of a rational being is directly autonomous -- a law unto itself. But the unconditional moral law, "duty" or "categorical imperative", the validity of which Kant does not question, is possible only on the supposition that the will is really free. As phenomenal beings we are subject to the laws of nature and reason, but as pure rational wills we move in the free, noumenal or intelligible realm, bound only by the self-imposed rational law "to treat humanity in every case as an end, never as a means only."

The influence of Pietism and of Rousseau's gospel of Nature are apparent in the essentially Christian and democratic direction in which Kant develops this rigorous ethics. The reality of God and the immortality of souls -- concerning which no theoretical demonstration was possible -- emerge now as postulates of practical reason; God, to assure the moral governance of a world in which virtue is crowned with happiness, the "summum bonum"; immortality, so that the pursuit of moral perfection may continue beyond the empirical life of man. These postulates, together with moral freedom and popular rights, provide the basis for Kant's assertion of the primacy of practical reason.

Finally, intellect and will are brought into meaningful relation (Critique of Judgment, 1789-1793) in the feelings of aesthetic (i.e., "artistic") enjoyment and natural purposiveness. The appreciation of beauty, "aesthetic judgment", arises from the harmony of an object of cognition with the forms of knowledge; the perfect compatibility, in other words, of Nature and freedom, best exemplified in genius. Natural purposiveness, on the other hand, is not necessarily a real attribute of Nature, but an a priori, heuristic principle, an irresistible hypothesis, by which we regard Nature as a supreme end or divine form in order to give the particular contents of Nature meaning and significance.

The influence of Kant has penetrated more deeply than that of any other modern philosopher. His doctrine of freedom became the foundation of idealistic metaphysics in Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, but not without sacrifice of the strict critical method. Schopenhauer based his voluntarism on Kant's distinction between phenomena and things-in-themselves. Lotze's teleological idealism was also greatly indebted to Kant. Certain psychological and pragmatic implications of Kant's thought were developed by J. F. Fries, Liebmann, Lange, Simmel and Vaihinger. More recently another group in Germany, reviving the critical method, sought a safe course between metaphysics and psychology; it includes Cohen, Natorp, Riehl, Windelband, Rickert, Husserl, Heidegger, and E. Cassirer. Until recent decades English and American idealists such as Caird, Green, Bradley, Howison, and Royce, saw Kant for the most part through Hegel's eyes. More recently the study of Kant's philosophy has come into its own in English-speaking countries through such commentaries as those of N. K. Smith and Paton. In France the influence of Kant was most apparent in Renouvier's "Phenomenism". -- O.F.K.


Kant-Laplace hypothesis: Theory of the origin of the solar system, formulated first by Kant (Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, 1755) and later by Laplace (Exposition of the System of the World, 1796). According to this theory the solar system evolved from a rotating mass of incandescent gas which by cooling and shrinking, and thus increasing its rate of spin, gradually flattened at its poles and threw off rings from its equator. These rings became the planets, which by the operation of the same laws developed their own satellites. While Laplace supposed the rotating nebula to have been the primordial stuff, Kant maintained that this was itself formed and put into rotation by gravitational action on the original atoms which through their impact with one another generated heat. -- A.C.B.
Kapila: Founder of the Sankhya (q.v.). -- K.F.L.
Karana: (Skr.) Cause; causa efficiens. -- K.F.L.
Karma, Karman: (Skr.) Action, movement, deed, a category e.g. in the Vaisesika (q.v.). In Indian philosophy generally thought of as a metaphysical entity carried by the individual along in samsara (q.v.). As law, karma would be identical with physical causation or causality while working with equal rigor in man's psychic and thought life. As such it is the unmitigated law of retribution working with equal precision in "good" and "evil" deeds and thoughts, thus determining the nature and circumstances of incarnation. Karma is classified into prarabdha (effects determining the unavoidable circumstances of man's life), samcita (effects able to be expiated or neglected, e.g., through jnana), and agami (effects currently generated and determining the future). Jainas (q.v.) enumerate 148 kinds of karma. -- K.F.L.
Karmakanda: (Skr., see Karma above) That portion of the Veda (q.v.) with which the priests are concerned. -- K.F.L.
Karmendriya: (Skr.) One of the five indriyas (q.v.) or powers of action, reactive or muscular senses, corresponding to the physiological capacities of expression or speech, seizing or handling, locomotion, excretion, and sexual activity. -- K.F.L.
Kathenotheism: A term invented by Max Müller which literally denotes one at a time -- theism. It symbolizes the Vedic monotheistic practice according to which the position of the gods is so arranged that each God is supreme in turn, in which the titular god is always changing without entailing a denial that the other gods exist. -- H.H.
Kempen, Thomas Hemerken van: (1380-1471) Also called Thomas a Kempis, was born at Kempen in Holland, received his early education and instruction in music at the monastery of the Brethren of the Common Life, at Deventer. He attended no university but attained a high degree of spiritual development. His Imitation of Christ is one of the most famous, and most used, books of Catholic spiritual meditation; it has been printed in nearly all languages and is found in innumerable editions. There seems to be no valid reason for questioning his authorship of the work. -- V.J.B.
Kenotism: The doctrine of Kenosis; literally the Greek term Kenosis means an emptying. The doctrine arose from the discussion of Phil, ii, 7, where we read that Christ "emptied himself, taking the form of a servant." Some have interpreted the text in the sense that the Son of God in becoming man put aside some of His divine attributes, while others, notably the Catholics, maintain that the abasement referred to signifies only the occultation of the Divinity when the Word was made flesh. -- J.J.R.
Kevala: (Skr. alone) A predicate or synonym of the Absolute in its unitary, free, autonomous, all-inclusive and universal aspect. The condition or state of being absolute and independent is kevalatva, one who meditates on or has attained personal experience of it, is a kevalin. -- K.F.L.
Kierkegaard, Sören: (1813-1855) Danish religious thinker whose influence was largely limited to Scandinavian and German circles until recently. His works are now translated into English and his thought revived by contemporary social pessimists. Eternity, he held, is more important than time; sin is worse than suffering ; man is an egotist and must experience despair; God is beyond reason and man; Christianity stands opposed to this world and time and to man's reason; paradoxes are the inevitable result of man's reflections; Christian ethics realizable only in eternity. Kierkegaard was raised in a stern Christian environment; he reacted against orthodox religion and official philosophies (especially Hegelianism). An individualist, a sensitive, melancholic personality suffering intense frustrations. Cf. German ed. of K's writings: Sämmtliche Werke (1909-), and Eng. translations of Swenson (Post-Scientific Philosophy, etc.). -- V.F.
Kind: (a) A class or collection of entities having a common character that differentiates members of this class from non-members, (b) J. S. Mill (System of Logic) limits the term to natural classes, such as biological species, where members have, in addition to the defining property, an unlimited number of other properties in common. -- C.A.B.
Kinesis: (Gr. kinesis) Motion; change. In Aristotle's philosophy three kinds of kinesis are distinguished:
  1. quantitative change, i.e. increase and diminution;
  2. change of quality; and
  3. change of place, or locomotion.
Among the forms of kinesis Aristotle also sometimes reckons the two forms of substantial change, viz. generation, or coming-to-be, and destruction, or passing-away. See Aristotelianism. -- G.R.M.
Knower, The: The subject of knowledge, conceived either as a mental act, an empirical self or a pure ego. See Subject. The knower in contrast to the object known. See Epistemological object. -- L.W.
Knowledge: (AS. cnawan, know) Relations known. Apprehended truth. Opposite of opinion. Certain knowledge is more than opinion, less than truth. Theory of knowledge, or epistemology (which see), is the systematic investigation and exposition of the principles of the possibility of knowledge. In epistemology: the relation between object and subject. See Epistemology.

Cf. E. Cassirer, Das Erkenntnisprobleme, 1906. -- J.K.F.


K'o chi: Conquering, controlling oneself or self-cultivation, Chinese scholars being divided in interpretation. By the first interpretation it mean's "restoring the moral order" and being a true man (jen), avoiding, in particular, partiality and selfish desires. By the second interpretation it means self realization. -- W.T.C.
Köhler, Wolfgang: (1887-) An associate of Wertheimer and Koffka at Frankfort, was one of the co-founders of Gestalt psychology. He was later Professor of Psychology at the University of Berlin and is now Professor of Psychology at Swarthmore College. His Gestalt Psychology (1929), contains an excellent statement in English of the theoretical foundations of Gestalt. -- L.W.
Koffka, Kurt: (1896) Along with Wertheimer and Köhler, one of the original triumvirate of Gestalt psychologists. See Gestalt Psychology. Koffka, relying on the results of Köhler's study of learning in apes, has, in opposition to the current attempts to treat learning exclusively in terms of trial and error, emphasized the essential role of insight in learning. See The Growth of the Mind, 1925, pp. 153-230. -- L.W.
Koran: (Qoran) The name for the sacred book of the Mohammedans. Its contents consist largely of warnings, remonstrances, assertions, arguments in favor of certain doctrines, narratives for enforcing morals. It stresses the ideal of the day of judgment, and abounds in realistic description of both the pains of hell and the delights of paradise. As a collection of commandments, it resembles juristic rescripts (answers to special questions), mentioning the contradictory rulings on the same subjects. It also resembles a diary of the prophet, consisting of personal addresses by the deity to Mohammed. -- H.H.
Korn, Alejandro: Born in San Vicente, Buenos Aires in 1860. Died in Buenos Aires, 1936. Psychiatrist in charge of Melchor Romero Hospital for the Insane and Professor of Anatomy at the National College of La Plata. Professor of Ethics and Metaphysics in the Universities of Buenos Aires and La Plata, from 1906-1930, and one time Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of Buenos Aires. Director of his own review, Valoraciones, and patriarch of the modern philosophical tradition of Argentine. The following may be considered his most important works: Influencias Filosoficas en la Evolucion Nacional, 1919; La Libertad Creadora, 1922; Esquema Gnoseologico, 1924; El Concepto de Ciencia, 1926; Axiologia, 1930; Apuntes Filosoficos, 1935.

Korn's philosophy represents an attack against naive and dogmatic positivism, but admits and even assimilates an element of Positivism which Korn calls Native Argentinian Positivism. Alejandro Korn may be called The Philosopher of Freedom. In fact, freedom is the keynote of his thought. He speaks of Human liberty as the indissoluble union of economic and ethical liberties. The free soul's knowledge of the world of science operates mainly on the basis of intuition. In fact, intuition is the basis of all knowledge. "Necessity of the objective world order", "Freedom of the spirit in the subjective realm", "Identity", 'Purpose", "Unity of Consciousness", and other similar concepts, are "expressions of immediate evidence and not conclusions of logical dialectics". The experience of freedom, according to Korn, leads to the problem of evaluation, which he defines as "the human response to a fact", whether the fact be an object or an event. Valuation is an experience which grows out of the struggle for liberty. Values, therefore, are relative to the fields of experience in which valuation takes place. The denial of an absolute value or values, does not signify the exclusion of personal faith. On the contrary, personal, faith is the common ground and point of departure of knowledge and action. See Latin-American Philosophy. -- J.A.F.


Kosa: (Skr.) "Sheath", one of the envelopes of the soul or self concealing its real nature, which is pure consciousness. The Vedanta knows three: the anandamaya, vijnanamaya, and annamaya koias, i.e., the sheaths of pleasure, intellect, and food, composing respectively the karana, suksma, and sthula larira, meaning the causal, subtile, and gross frame or body. -- K.F.L.
Ko wu:
  1. Investigation of things. (Confucianism.)
  2. Investigation of the Reason (li) of things and affairs to the utmost. (Chu Hsi, 1130-1200.)
  3. "Rectification" of things and affairs by the extension of one's intuitive knowledge so that what is not correct in things, and therefore evil, may be corrected and made good. (Wang Yang-ming, 1473-1529.)
-- W.T.C.
Kratocracy: (Gr. krateros, strong) Government by those who are strong enough to seize power through force or cunning. (Montague.) -- H.H.
Krause, Karl Christian Friedrich: (1781-1832) Kant's younger contemporary, who attempted to formulate a speculative reconciliation of theism and pantheism, or "panentheism". Main works: Grundl. d. Naturrechts, 1803; System d. Sittenlehre, 1810; Das Urbild d. Menschheit, 1811; Vorles. u.d. Grundwahrheiten d. Wissenschaften, 1829. -- R.B.W.
Ksanika-vada: (Skr.) The Buddhistic theory (vada) asserting that everything exists only momentarily (ksanika), hence changes continually. -- K.F.L.
Ku: Cause, "that with the obtaining of which a thing becomes." "A minor cause is that the obtaining of which a thing may not necessarily be so but without the obtaining of which a thing will never be so." "A major cause is that with the obtaining of which a thing is necessarily so but without the obtaining of which a thing is necessarily not so." (Neo-Mohism.) -- W.T.C.
Kua: Trigram. See Pa kua.
Kuei: Man's spirit after death; earthly spirits coexisting with heavenly spirits (shen); the passive or negative (yin) aspect of the soul as against the active or positive (yang) aspect which is called hun; the operation of the passive cosmic principle, yin, (in Neo-Confucian-ism), -- W.T.C.
Kulpe, Oswald: (1862-1915) Opposing idealistic Neo-Kantianism, he is the most typical pioneer of philosophical realism in Germany. He characterized the method of the sciences, himself a leading psychologist, as a procedure which he terms Realizierung. He affirms the existence of the real in sharp contrast to every conscientialism and objective idealism. He defends the possibility and justification of physical realism. He recognizes neither purely rational nor purely empirical arguments for the existence of the external world in itself. Main works:
Grundriss d. Psychol., 1893;
Einleitung i.d. Philos., 1895 (Eng. tr. Introd. to Philosophy); Kant, 1907;
Erkenntnistheorie u. Wissensch., 1910;
Die Realisierung, 3 vols. 1912-1922;
Vorlesungen über Logik, 1921.
-- H.H.
K'un: (a) The trigram of the element earth of the eight trigrams (pa kua). (b) The trigram of the female principle of the universe. See Ch'ien. -- H.H.
Kung: Accomplishment "which is of benefit to the people." (Mohism.) -- W.T.C.
Kung: Respect; courtesy; politeness; expression of reverence and seriousness (chin). Kung refers to expression, whereas chin refers to action. (Confucianism, Neo-Confucianism.) -- W.T.C.
Kuo Hsiang: (Kuo Tzu-hsuan, c. 312 A.D.) The outstanding Taoist in medieval China, wrote the standard commentary on Chuang Tzu based on the notes of his senior contemporary Hsiang Hsiu. -- W.T.C.