a. and sb. [f. the name of the celebrated German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) + -IAN.]
A. adj. Of, pertaining to, or connected with Kant or his philosophy.
Kant’s characteristic doctrine was that a critical analysis of our experience discloses: (a) in logic, that thought actively synthesizes the matter of sense under certain laws (‘forms’ and ‘categories’) which are a priori determinable as universally valid for and within experience; (b) in ethics, that an absolutely valid moral ‘law’ is similarly determinable, whence the reality of God, Freedom, and Immortality is deducible as ‘practically necessary,’ even though to speculative thought the nature and very existence of the non-phenomenal or noümenal must remain ‘problematic.’
Hence Kantian tends to connote ‘apriorism’ or ‘transcendentalism,’ viz. the view that certain necessary truths are determinable as implications of our logical and moral experience. (R. R. Marett.)
1817. Edin. Rev., XXVIII. 491. Mr. Coleridge has ever since … been … floating or sinking in fine Kantean categories.
1858. W. R. Pirie, Inq. Hum. Mind, II. iv. 194. A strong bias in favour of the Kantian metaphysics.
1862. H. Spencer, First Princ., I. iii. § 15 (1875), 49. Shall we then take refuge in the Kantian doctrine? shall we say that Space and Time are forms of the intellect—a priori laws or conditions of the conscious mind?
1877. E. Caird, Philos. Kant, 666. The ultimate decision … as to the Kantian Criticism of Pure Reason must turn upon the opposition of perception and conception, as factors which reciprocally imply, and yet exclude, each other.
B. sb. One who holds the philosophical system of Kant.
1832. Edin. Rev., LVI. 164, note. The Kantians ‘make a broad distinction between the Understanding and Reason.’
Hence Kantianism; so Kantism, Kantist, Kantite (rare).
1803. Beddoes, Hygëia, IX. 205, note. I hate metaphysics … that is, the school-learning of old and modern Kantianism.
1819. Pantologia, s.v., Kantian Philosophy, Kantism, or Critical Philosophy.
1825. Carlyle, Schiller (1845), App. 290. He answered me like an accomplished Kantite.
1830. Mackintosh, Eth. Philos., Wks. 1846, I. 214. The … professor … has rapidly shot through Kantianism.
1839. Carlyle, Misc., St. Germ. Lit. (1872), I. 67. The Kantist, in direct contradiction to Locke and all his followers … commences from within.
1845. Maurice, Mor. & Met. Philos., in Encycl. Metrop., II. 667/1. Kantism, or the attempt to build upon this doctrine of a practical and speculative reason, has inevitably led to the loss of all these good consequences.
1886. Sidgwick, Hist. Ethics (1892), 271. Kantism in the ethical thought of modern Europe holds a place somewhat analogous to that occupied by the teaching of Price and Reid among ourselves.
