I don't "get" philosophy. Is stuff like Kant and Nietzsche supposed to make sense...

Philosophy MA student here. Undergrad in german specifically to understand Kant,Heidegger,etc. Let me help you out.

There is a lot going on when one reads Kant. It is really difficult to understand without a few resrouces,like a good knowledge of philosophical terms and the history of philosophy and western thought. A lot of what Kant says is clearly influenced by other philosophers,like Berkeley. So here you have a barrier to entry to make it kind of difficult. Also language,you are reading a translation of a german writer so hard to read germans translate to english and back to german to read. I remember distinctly that he more or less makes up german words that make sense but dknt exitst in a standard dictionary(like ablernen in critic of pure reason) so there is another big barrier.
I would say though to say people just "pretend" to understand. It is very difficult and when you get into concepts like epistomology it becomes much more like a STEM degree than the useless liberal arts degree people think it is. For example i work on the concept of perception and objectivity in the scientific method and my colleagues work on lambda calculjs. Anyway,if you would oike me to elaborate on why kant is important or what and why what he said does make sense,i wouldnt mind provided this doesn't 404

>Anyway,if you would oike me to elaborate on why kant is important or what and why what he said does make sense,i wouldnt mind

Go ahead

Oops i can't type when i'm drunk(also non-native). *to say people just "pretend" to understand is a bit of a stretch* is what i meant

Lmao this nigga thinks he knows Greek.
Philos = Love
Soph = Wisdom

So kant added a lot to philosophy in a lot of different fields. In my opinion the most important are his contributions to formal logic. More or less there is a pyramid of how "pure" or truthful a proposition is. A proposition in laymens terms is a statement with a truth value of true or false. (The seems really basic but it is the basis of western knowledge) so when we get into propositions we want to confirm whether they are true or false. If something is what is called a priori knowledge,it means we know it without having to experience anything(experience and perception was th biggest debate leading into cant,further reading is rarionalism vs empericism). Usually this means the "answer" is contained with the predicate. For example "all bachelors are unmarried" is necessarily(100%) always true. There is also a posteriori knowledge which is gained from experience. So a proposition can be it is raining,but you would need to experience the rain in some way to confirm or deny the truth value. Kant argued that there was something called synthetic a priori,aka something we can know as fact without experience,even though it is not contained in the predicate,for example 7+5=12. I will continue but im gonna send tbis so everyone can read it and mount wuestions qhioe i type

So when now can now use pure reason(vereinen vernunft) to access the truth value of proposition as a priori without having to add 5 stones to 7 stones. Again this sounds really basic but one must remember philosophy is "first science" and is dealing here with the very basis of western knowledge. Kant used because Kant was obsessed with,well,knowing and reason. He argued in his moral philosophy everyone should always act according to utmost reason and not to intuition(not saying he is 100% right,just explaining his points). He also was very critical of perception because of this. He would argue that if there is no one there to perceive something,then it can not exist(Berkeley had a similar idea before,saying tbis is true but God is the perceiver that holds things in place--he was an anglican bishop). We can not logically say a room exists if we can not experience it in any way,because that would go beyond our reason.

This shit is blowing my white ass away

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Schulzes's criticisms of Kant were right, the thing-in-itself is supposed to be unknowable, but yet Kant builds the entire process of knowledge on it, how can one attribute causality (that is, things in themselves are the causes of representations and thus experience) to something that is supposed to be unknowable, his system inevitably leads to nihilism

Its a lot more than one can really explain on a Yea Forums thread and soak it. Even were i better at explaining it we are skipping 2000 years of developement in western thought that is pretty important

>He would argue that if there is no one there to perceive something,then it can not exist
Kant tried to prove the exact opposite of this, in fact he argued the reverse in which self-consciousness is only possible because there are things out there which are then unified in the transcendental unity of apperception

Yes,but thats much later,i was trying to kinda segue into locke's impression and into Kants version of categories but im drunk and theres a lot to unpack here

"sophy" is not reason. the word soph means wisdom.

someone that loves reason would be something like scientist instead.

Philosophy is supposed to be the discussion of finding some sort of "truth". It looks into WHY we think certain things or how we come to make assumptions etc.

In a more practical sense, it is often a load of shit. Not in the sense that it's meaningless. Philosophy has meaning, but very little practical value in a modern (or in ancient) environment.

A philosophy major argues well and will debate based on solid (although often misguided and politically charged) reasoning. They don't tend to get paid much, but often make the best of the field when pursuing post graduates in medicine, law, or other STEM fields.