Finding Kant VERY difficult- a humble call for aid

Hey there

I am doing an essay on Kant. Now this is my third year and I am gunning for 1st’s across the board but Kant is causing me much headaches. I have two essays of his to do for the year so I want to get them done and off my chest asap. I am much into Existentialism and find metaphysics extremely dry and abstract (obviously :slight_smile:). My main problem is that the concepts unlike Ex. do not seem at all relevant so I have trouble grasping them when they arent either directly or indirectly applicable to some area of my life.

The essay question is DOES KANT SHOW THAT SPACE AND TIME ARE A PRIORI INTUITIONS?

So far I have been reading and reading for 6 hours a day and merely rewriting what the secondary texts say about it. I still feel I am far away from having a ‘grasp’ on the situation and as such I will barely be scraping 40% at present. Since I have read all the books in my library and non have given me a handle on the situation I have come to a standstill as to how I am to get my head around it and decided to post a plea for aid! I have written many emails and drafts to my tutor which helps a little but it too hasent given me a further handle on the situation.

If someone with MSN and a handle on Kants Transcendental Aesthetic would be kind enough to spare some time to go through it with me I would be very grateful. Or any other means of communicadoe they may wish. I feel that to and froing over the forum may prove a little slow as I want this thing done within the week and feel the waiting on replies may prove a little sluggish. I only need to get a fundamental grapple on what is really going on so that all the terminology (convoluted jargon) becomes clear to me. I am finding it rather frustrating as usually I have my head around things by now and Kant is proving a most elusive foe!

Thanks alot
Jake.

ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/vi … p?t=159048

Agape - I feel for you. I think the cited thread will help. The reall answer is that he does and he doesn’t. Actually, the real answer is that he doesn’t. Actually the real answer is that Kant is an idiot.

Actually, I don’t think it’s a very good question.

Does Kant show that a priori knowledge is possible?

That’s the fundamental question. It is difficult to answer because he contradicts himself on this. I would attack Kant’s reasoning itself, and try to demonstrate that he shows nothing whatever. Space and time, well, he certainly spends some time on that, but that specific question is less important than his attempts about a priori knowledge in general.

I despise Kant, and I would despise your prof for treating him as anything better than a very pronounced influence on many other philosophers. To take Kant seriously in and of himself as a thinker is a waste of time.

Is this a religion-owned school you are attending?

My heart is still aching. Can’t you do an end run, and point out that the a priori/posteriori question is a bogus one to begin with? Shit - it’s just anachronistic at this point.

It really sucks that you have to do this. I can only believe that you are european. I don’t think they bother much with this in the States anymore. I could be wrong.

Thanks for replies. Ive read that thread but is mostly just Kant bashing and a few supporters. It makes my ego feel a little better that there are others who find him as anal as I.

More to the point faust, no matter whether you hate him, do you understand him and could you syphen that knowledge into mind mind!?

I want to get both these bastard essays done and jettisoned to outer space as quickly as I humanly can! Then I return to the fun stuff…Nietzsche!

It is my own fault for choosing him as an option, the blurb told me a different tale I tells ye!

You are correct Im in UK. If you have some time Id appreciate if you could help me overcome this old mummy’s wrath.

Also what is an ‘end run’ :slight_smile:?

The first problem you have is the same one most people have - you expect that Kant has the answer. That he actually reaches a conclusion. He doesn’t. That’s why the question isn’t quite fair.

Kant’s epistemology turns on the “thing-in-itself”, which he variously states that we cannot know and also that it is a product of our minds. This simply makes no sense.

There is no way around that.

In a nutshell, Kant assumes that space and time are things of some sort. He confuses that which is measured with the measurement itself. The four dimensions are measurements. They are not things at all. They do not exist empirically. The things that we use the four dimensions to meaure do exist.

It is true that we cannot exist, cannot survive, without these measurements. But that is a function of being human, of being sentient beings, and not of the universe at large.

It’s a simple mistake that he spends thousands of words to make.

Attack him at his roots - once he assumes that those four dimensions are real, he’s screwed. The rest of what he has to say means nothing.

That may be the most time I can spend on Kant without my head exploding.

Thanks that may be useful.

My main problem is I dont ‘get’ his dry crackers with nothing to washi it down terminology mainly because my mind is too stubborn to WANT to get something that appears to have no value whatsoever.

Is there a way I could get aorund this? If I just as best I can explain his terminology by just clumsily rehashing secondary sources then that is the 40%. Next to boost things up I need a discussion, showing other sources. I read the Norman Kemp commentary but he is JUST AS BAD as Kant.

I just had a thought. Maybe I could swing in with a curveball by saying how Kant fails because he is talking out of his ass, and bring the titan Nietzsche up to the play using HIM as my secondary source of critique! thus avoiding getting more entrenched in Kant’s quagmire :slight_smile: Now THAT will certainly spice things up. The only question is whether this will adhere to question enough to be acceptable.

Oh - I do have to clarify something. Kant at the same time says that we intuit space and time, but that they DO NOT exist. But this is a contradiction. (Someone will catch me on this.) We cannot intuit something that does not exist - but this intuition is central to his theory. It is a pure contradiction, then. That’s the problem. Kant is illiterate - he doesn’t understand the meanings of the word he uses.

So, yes, you can say that Kant doesn’t think space and time exist, but then we cannot inuit them.

My reading of the word “intuit” requires that Kant is really claiming that space and time exist - but he will tell you differently. But i don’t care what he will tell you about what he is telling you. To take him seriously here renders his thinking incoherent - which is what it is.

I would bring up Hume, as well. Nietzsche is, in my view, a direct descendant of Hume on these matters, but he is not, strictly speaking, an epistemologist.

Using either Hume or Nietzsche is an end run - a run around Kant rather than trying to slog through him.

But I think you understand - he makes no sense, and so can’t be treated as we might another thinker - it’s gibberish, which is difficult to argue against.

Another thing - people who have only one eye lack depth perception. People who are blind have no visual peception. Our measurements of space/time are not about the software alone - they are about the hardware, too.

Skip ahead to brain science. Kant lacked scientific knowledge - knowledge that we now have about how the brain works. He speculated about stuff that we have facts on now.

Well I think it would also be valid to bring the Nietzsean anthropomorphism/egocentrism into play here. what you reckon?

Would you agree that Kant is prying the world into his model here? Thing is Im still guessing because like I say I still dont understnad him properly after all my efforts…

I could state the thesis then launch into how hes a crappass for al the reasons we give here and others given by my favoured philosophers.

Thing is I want to give myself enough freedom so as to be able to get some of my own creativity into its but at the same time stick to the path of essay writing enough so it gets me good marks. At the moment I feel I have no breathing space.

Yeah - Kant panicked when he read Hume. He tried to find a way in which certain knowledge was possible. Neither Nietzsche nor Hume agreed. In the end, Kant didn’t agree with himself.

Nietzsche gives a clue - I don’t remember if he was talking about Kant specifically, but he might as well have been - if you really want to get to the bottom of any philosophy, look to the morality it supports. Just as Hume was trying to discount the possiblitiy of God (Prime Mover), Kant was trying to let him, or at least Christian morality, back in.

That is the real story of Kant - but I’m not sure how you would answer the question that way.

An alternative to my claim that Kant was trying to say we intuit space and time - he also seems to say that space and time are a form of intuition itself. That is, in a way, anthropomorphism. “Intuit” is a transitive verb. It has to be something that we intuit. It’s as if, in some Hobbes-like way, he posits the human mind (instead of body) as a metaphor for the universe - and then forgets it’s a metaphor, and takes it litlerally.

The man was insane, as was Hobbes.

Oh, faust, you’re always so hard on Kant.

You’re right that Kant is rife with contradictions, but these contradictions come only later in his writing. Granted, I have no idea what the hell he’s talking about either, but I think I had a good grasp of his “mission statement” in the introduction to his Critique of Pure Reason.

Kant is very slippery, so I may be completely out to lunch in my interpretation, but this is what I gathered from it:

Metaphysics has gotten us nowhere. The methods of Plato and Aristotle have born no fruits. What we need is a new science of metaphysics. But this science will have to be unlike the physical ones, unlike that taken on by Plato and Aristotle whereby Truth was sought in an ulterior realm - it will have to be a science of thought, a science of the nature of logic as it plays out in the faculty of reason and epistemics - that is, a science of how our thoughts work.

The ontological status of metaphysical matters is beyond our epistemics, and it is therefore a futile pursuit to seek Truth outside of thought. Yet, we are human, and it is intrinsic to human nature that we delve into metaphysics, that we posit an existence beyond phenomenological reality. So as much as we dismiss metaphysical ontology as groundless and irrelevant, we are drawn to explore it. Therefore, the correct approach is not to live in ignorance about it, but to understand it so as to manage our tendency to build Truths from it. We cannot do this by means akin to the physical sciences or those employed by Plato and Aristotle, but we can by understanding the nature of rational thought and the acquisition of knowledge. This is a science that is needed, for without it, we go astray.

Only after having laid this down does Kant proceed to get muddled deeper and deeper into confusion and self-contradiction. It seems like a noble outlook to me, but I think the fact that he had ulterior motives (proving a priori moral principles and the existence of God) is what got him into trouble later.

I think Kant has a bum rap in much the same way as Nietzsche does. Nietzsche spoke adamantly against ethics, claiming that they do more harm to us than good. But so many (nazis come to mind) take him to mean that ethics should be relegated to the waste bin and abandoned completely. But anyone who reads Ecce Homo (I think) would know Nietzsche had a different use for ethics in mind. He wanted to establish a “science of ethics”. He understood, like Kant understood about metaphysics, that ethics was an inseparable part of human nature. It would always be with us. It could never be dispensed with. Therefore, what was needed was not ignorance of it, but a method of managing it. What was needed was a way to understand it, to understand how it works, and with that understanding, apply it as a sort of technology for the benefit of mankind. If we don’t wield it, it will wield us.

A new science of metaphsyics, huh. That’s an oxymoron. Kant is just a moron.

The science of how our thought “works” is brain science - which I allowed that kant didn’t have access to.

It is not intrinsic to human nature to delve into metaphysics. I don’t delve. It’s bunk. Yet, I am human.

Yes - I agree and mentioned that - his motives were purely to save Christianity. He failed. Fortunately for christianity, it didn’t need saving.

What Nietzsche understood was that ethics is a human invention. What Kant didn’t understand was that ethics is a human invention.

You pick.

Kant’s confusion was inevitable. But he was wrong before he contradicted himself. That is gibberish. All of it.

Hey agape,

Rorty´s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature could offer some good explanation and critique. Rorty explains the metaphysical mess brought on mainly by Descartes and struggled with by Locke and Kant. Do the index thing and see what he has to say about Kant.

Also, do you have a Blackwells where you are, coz why don´t check out those Introducing… books (that are usually on spindles). I´ve definitely seen one on Kant. It could be a little too basic though to pinpoint your problem.

I would venture that the reason metaphysics doesn’t come natural to you is because you’ve already applied the sort of “technology” I alluded to in my previous post. It’s called materialism. It’s a system of thought - a program if you will - that stomps out metaphysics as soon as it veers its head into your contemplations. It’s a thought-technology that does Kant one better - it not only manages metaphysics, but solves the problem all together. It’s only in virtue of this that you don’t delve.

The brain sciences only come after materialism - the latter is the official approach to handling metaphysics, and then the science of thought becomes the science of the brain.

Gib,
You equate metaphysics with that which is beyond our phenomenological experience, and you present materialism as a preferable alternative. But it seems to me that matter itself is beyond our phenomenological experience. The only thing immediately familiar to us phenomenologically are our own minds. Matter itself belongs in the very category in which your place metaphysics - an existence beyond beyond our phenomenological experience. At the same time, metaphysics seems definitionally opposed to materialism in a way that ought to prevent them from belonging to the same category. I think matter belongs in this category - as an existence beyond our phenomenological experience. So, then, what of metaphysics? Are we to take it be a third step farther beyond our phenomenological experience? Or are we to take this as evidence that we are defining metaphysics incoherently? Please guide me out of this maze if you can.

Syntactical,

Don’t confuse what I said to be my own views. I’m interpreting Kant, and I’m psychologizing faust (no offense, faust :wink:). I’ve said nothing about the truth of either Kant’s or faust’s positions.

I’ve presented materialism as one way, out of a possible many, to control our thoughts on metaphysics. And it does control it, as many materialist can attest to. Doesn’t mean I think it’s true, just that it’s very efficient at this task.

As for matter being beyond our phenomenological “bubble”, you could say this, but you should keep in mind that “matter” is just a word, and it can be attributed to any referent you want. Same with “metaphysics”. If you attribute them to the same referent (in your case, that which is beyond phenomena), then essentially you’ve equated them. To say that “metaphysics seems definitionally opposed to materialism” depends on the definitions you have in mind. The only sense in which this is true is if we attribute the word “matter” directly to phenomena.

A good pointer for you is that when we place matter beyond phenomena, we essentially deny it any of the attributes that only our phenomenological experience could bestow upon it. In other words, matter, when placed beyond phenomena, isn’t really matter anymore - at least, not the stuff we’re acquainted with through experience. It would have to take a form completely alien to our conception, and therefore very well may be metaphysical.

gib - either we are intrinsically drawn to metpahysics ot we are not. I haven’t blocked out metaphysics - I studied it for years. It’s just bunk. It happens. Kant had Hume, at least, which is the philosophical antidote to metaphysics. He just chose, for political reasons, to combat Hume. Just as Hume wrote what he wrote for political reasons. Philosophers are humans, and it is just as human to be a materialist as it is to be a metaphysician. We don’t need modern brain science to allow materialism. Nietzsche was a materialist. So was Marx. So was Hume, for that matter.

Materialism “controlling” metaphysics? As if it needs “controlling”? Nope. It’s just crap.

I’m suggesting that if metaphysics is thought of as that which is beyond our direct phenomenological experience, then materialism fails at controlling the metaphysical impulse because materialism itself presupposes the existence of something outside our direct phenomenological experience - namely matter. If I’m right, then materialists can swear up and down that they’ve attenuated the metaphysical tendency, but really they are still indulging in another form of the very thing they seek to oppose. I don’t consider that to be terribly efficient.

This is just the problem. You presented metaphysics as being that which is beyond our phenomenological experience. Since matter is also beyond our phenomenological experience - (The only thing within our phenomenological experience is mental phenomena.) - it is you who have set up the equivocation. Once this equivocation has occurred, materialism is revealed as being incapable of attenuating metaphysical tendencies.

Of course it depends on the definitions I have in mind. All applications of language depend on the definitions we have in mind. Commonly, metaphysics is thought of as being beyond physics, where physics belongs to materialism - therefore metaphysics is assumed to be opposed to materialism. Metaphysics must be opposed to materialism, in order for materialism to have the power to attenuate the tendency towards metaphysical thought. But if we operate under the definition of metaphysics that you present - namely that it is that which is beyond our phenomenological experience - then the opposition is dissolved and materialism is revealed as being incapable of attenuating the metaphysical tendency since it indulges in metaphysics itself since matter is beyond our phenomenological experience.