PoR, thanks for the tip. I checked out sparknotes and it looks like an excellent resource. As for your tone, go get an overview of your ass, you simpleton. And Monooq, quit posturing – it’s OKAY to cry, buddy. We both know that you see any attack on Kant as a personal assault. And I did imply you were wasting your life. So take my apology like a man.
Ah, the beasters! I just harvested three ounces of that stuff that I grew this past year. I woulda had alot more if it wasn’t for the godamn bugs and rabbits.
Gamer,
“Kant’s wee-german deductions about God and other “noumena”…is REALLY the part that loses me”
This is like saying the wee-Greek part about a theory of forms is the part you don’t get about Plato. If you don’t get noumena, you don’t get Kant. It is his attempt to grasp God and noumena and deduce from those categories that makes him an antithesis of Sartre. I certainly don’t think it is fruitless to compare the philosophers, but to equate the two just seems wrong. Sartre’s consciousness is based in Nothingness, Kant’s on rational parameters.
I don’t know where you get the “…the suffocating notion that I’ve been living in an internal universe all along…” from Kant. Kant’s world is both rational and divine.
Dunamis
D.
“Both Kant and Sartre far exceed the boundaries in which they were placed here.”
Thank you for this wonderful explanation of how the two philosophers are alike. Now that you have broken the elemental categories of both of their philosophies down into an even greater and more vague category, my understanding of both has been lightened.
It would be interesting to actually hear how you think the two philosophers are similar.
Dunamis
right and wrong aren’t words that should apply to any philosopher. i’m not sure how kant is ‘wrong’, or how that would be ‘ok’, ‘better than the alternative’. kant is important.
gamer obviously realizes that kant is important - he calls sartre and husserl kantians, which they are ofcourse. i know why he thinks he could have written the KrV himself. whatever the next great book is, gamer will think he could have written it himself. i don’t understand how what confuses him about kant is from the second critique, which was written easily, and is at best nothing special and is pretty commonly regarded as ordinary. if i ever glorify kant, it is from the first critique… the only reason why he is remembered.
you should read the first critique before deciding you already knew everything in it, instead of reading short intros written by ordinary people who do what de’trop described and then did himself.
Monooq,
Please tell me how Sartre is a Kantian. I feel that I am missing something with three people feeling the same thing. In what way is that the case?
Dunamis
(i have no idea either.) it doesn’t bother me. i just play with whats on my side.
I tell you that neither can be captured in a post, I remain silent, and you still carry on like, as a friend once put it: “a dog returning to his own vomit.”
Between the foot and the pipe in your mouth, I don’t know how you get a word in, pal.
Obviously Kant’s important. But why is Russell, and say, Ayn Rand, so vehemently anti-Kant?
A. who is ayn rand and who cares what she says.
B. what does this have to do what anything?
Gamer,
Perhaps this would interest you, despite its psychoanalytic basis. Lacan argued that the Truth of Kant is expressed in de Sade. While I am not sure that the argument holds -and the paralells are intreging-, if you read through it, you get the sense of how deeply Kant reverberated throughout philosophy, and perhaps will see Kant in a different and more compelling way.
egs.edu/faculty/zizek/zizek- … ouple.html
Dunamis
Monooq, my original post was: I often hear that most people don’t really, truly understand the most important aspects of Kant’s philosophy except for professional philosophers. For those you who know Kant well, can you attempt to isolate and illuminate one or two of the pivotal fine points that potentially cause the most confusion among closet philosophers like me?"
So forget me, what about Ayn Rand? Russell? What are they failing to grasp? If you’re saying Rand ain’t a real philosopher you’ll get no argument from me. But the $ tattoo on my back says that if I can understand her failing with Kant, I can better understand my own.
Dunamis, De Sade? You don’t know if the argument holds but the simple fact that people are searching for Kant in strange places means something? Fuck, people look for Elvis in strange places, too. Elvis was the king, but not mine. Jury’s out on Kant.
Gamer,
“You don’t know if the argument holds but the simple fact that people are searching for Kant in strange places means something?”
Glad to see that you have read the article and come up with a penetrating assessment.
Dunamis
I did read it and I felt it didn’t hold, either. De Sade’s characters are closet Kantians. And Ron Jeremy is in fact a proponent of Henri Bergson. Yeah, these are useful links, keep 'em coming. Fuck Lacan, the pompous ass was just trying to get published, perhaps even trying to get laid. The whole stance gave Lacan ammunition to convince young philosophy coeds to do strange, sick things.
Gamer,
That the universalizing structure of morality may very well lead to dehumanization, is not a trite point really and held some currency in the Frankfurt school. Despite Lacan’s serious character flaws, the thought has wieght. Arguments from circumstance are weak. For instance, that Sartre’s Being and Nothingness may have only been responding the impossible position French cultural-elitism found itself in after having its butt kicked by the military arm of German Idealism and waiting to be saved by the military arm of American Pragmatism, does not reduce the beauty, or even the truth of what he attempted to say. I am glad you read it though.
Dunamis
Just a guess about Rand, but her Ethical Egoism would be anathema to Kant’s Deontological ethics.
you said “russell and rand are vehemently anti-kant” …you have to explain to people who haven’t read russell that what you actually mean is russell doesn’t understand kant. at least thats what you’ve implied. and that makes you feel good because you don’t understand kant either. (and perhaps this makes you think that after you read him… you won’t understand him still.)
and you can say kant is nonsense because russell doesn’t understand him. or something, i’m not really sure what you’ll say.
btw, what do the short introductions to russell say that russell thinks about kant?
i’ve already said that its pretty commonly accepted that where most people can’t follow kant is in the transcendental analytic where he talks about his doctrine of the pure categories of the understanding that unify the manifold of representations in experience and lend it intelligibility. if you ever read kant, then feel free to disagree. i’m just saying strawson, wilkerson, …now shopenhauer that i know of say, yea, thats where shit hits the fan. and i also said i thought it was because shit always hits the fan in new important unheardof inquiries like the role of the mind in the interpretation of experience. but i already listed some good things about kant.
philosophers don’t tend to reject an earlier philosopher so ‘vehemently’ unless they think they need to. i’m not really sure what russell has said, and don’t care what ayn rand said, so i can’t respond. (not that i could anyways). but i don’t look at the history of philosophy as one person out-doing another, making them more right. i look at each philosopher like a building block… which makes kant a fully motorized industrial crane. which you need to be aware of to use what is built with it… which is everything since the first critique was published.
Okay, Rand says Kant is dangerous and has ruined the world. It is anathema to Rand. Why does she disagree though? She does have a way of calling out bullshit, even as obnoxious andpretentious as she is. In Philosophy: Who Needs It, she blames everything on Kant. Monooq, you should check that out for fun at least.
Russell says, in HOWP that he disagrees with everything Kant says, and blames a lot of subsequent confusion on Kant, but admits Kant’s “importance” by way of influence anyway.
A lot of psychologists and experts inartificial intelligence also discount Kant. It’s downright kantentious, and as a kant fetishist, you should familiarize yourself with the arguments. I for one will read up on Kant and get back to you.
Thanks to all for taking the time.
G
I have a question.
Kant says an action is wrong because it would be wrong if everyone does it.
Assume, it is wrong if everyone does it. If I prevent everyone from doing it, and still do it myself. Would I be acting ethically from Kantian perspective?
I really do not think Kant has made any good points. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Edit: On Duty
Kant also said it is only ethical if we should do thing based on the call of duty not passion.
If I was commanded to kill innocent children, would it be ethical for me to carry out my duty?
Kant’s view on ethics is just rubbish.
Not only will everyone never act the same even if they tried, you would never be able to prevent everyone’s acts either.
This is a hypothetical absurdity which doesn’t work in either case.
Why it took the world [looks at wrist watch]…this long to figure it out is beyond me.