Britannica
Sources used in this answer
How did Kant understand causality and substance as categories of understanding?
Created from Britannica articles
using AI.
AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.
metaphysics
Detail of a Roman copy (2nd century bce) of a Greek alabaster portrait bust of Aristotle (c. 325 bce); in the collection of the Museo Nazionale Romano, Rome.
In his transcendental idealism, Immanuel Kant argued that causality and substance are not derived from experience but are a priori categoriesāpure concepts of the understandingāthat the mind imposes upon sense data to create an intelligible structure of experience.123
- Causality: Kant maintained that causality is a necessary condition for experience. Unlike David Hume, who viewed causality as a result of constant conjunction, Kant argued that the concept includes a necessary connection. Because it is an a priori category, we can know that "every event has a cause" independently of experience, as it is a requirement for ordering phenomena in time.41
- Substance: Kant categorized substance under "inherence and subsistence." These categories function as the framework for knowledge, prescribing the form that experience must take.12
Kant emphasized that these categories are "empty" without sense intuition; they yield valid knowledge only when applied to objects of possible experience (phenomena). Consequently, they cannot be used to establish truths about things-in-themselves (noumena), such as God, freedom, or the immortality of the soul, which lie beyond the reach of human scientific knowledge.125