Kant vs Nietzsche

Yes I stand by my statement that no human being actually thinks and acts in this way. The categorical imperative functions as the controller, and i do not know of any person that uses it to check his moral views to. You need to check if you moral principle can be willed a (descriptive) universal law without contradiction… seriously?

It doesn’t say alot then.

Yes like i said he is a rationalist, and so he starts from general principles… which is exactly my problem with him. I think anything worth a damn starts from the concrete or empirical, and abstracts from that to arrive at more general principles.

The word “progress” is a bit problematic, because the development is spiral cyclic, not simply linear or even exponential. So the so–called “human grogress” is merely in our thoughts and not the real development, but we have to keep the process in motion, and therefore we need such thoughts.

Criticism, scepticism, and (as the extreme form) nihilism are historically justified as well but lack of solutions - that’s tautological, because they are what they are: criticism, scepticism, nihilism. The solutions come from history itself. The “next Kant” will come in about 2000 years or will not come (because humans will be too stupid or not live anymore). :wink:

Apart from FC coming in here with a chip on his shoulder, this has turned out to be a great thread thus far!

I’m enjoying the correspondence between Prismatic and Sauwelios.

Prismatic appears to be a Kant expert and Sauwelios a N. expert. Perfect match.

Keep it going!

I am not too sure what the implications of Your statement that 'you should understand…and misinterpret his views are. You can be a Kantina, an expert i Kant, and spend a lifetime in pursuit of his works. However, i do not really go along with an extended ide that only experts in Kant can present an opinion based summeril on well understood concepts.
The fact is, and i read through Your arguments carefully, it is safe to say, that Kant’s significance begins and ends in moral and social philosophy. Metaphysics was and is totally sweed up , and there is no question that Nietzche’ssignificance arises from
Hegel’s nihilization, as far as rationality goes. Kant was unable to realize the wished for aims of his synthesis, and no amount of argument will save that rm of his thinking. Moral philosophy? Categorical imperative? Does that jive with what is morally going on inn the world? Absolutely not. We as human beings are on the verge of extinction, and can it be professed by anyone thatwe are acting categorically in accorfdance to certain well accepted, objective criteria? Your critique of me, shows deph in studying him yes,but as affording moral principles, by dismissing ressonable arguments in effect, shows an affected inability to give up the type of egressive argument which tries to connect effects to causes.
And this exclusively tied to moral philosophy.

The reason that i consider Nietzche the ‘better’ philosopher, is, that when it comes to Humean doubt, he ‘should’ have categorically left the synthesis in it’s self, because, he should have forseen a nihilization, and a recurrance of Being. (in existentialism). His categorical dismissal, interferes with his moral imperative. For that alone, i consider him second rate next to Nietzche. Please allow me the benefit of applying my own perspectives within this mode of mind set.

“Experts”? The word “expert” is as problemnatic as the word “progress”. One has to be an “expert” or even a “super-expert” In order to decide whether another one is an “expert” or not.

Do you really know whether this one or that one is an “expert”? Maybe this or that “expert” is simply a fanatic or an impostor.

Try to find it out! Ask questions! Ask them as if you were i.e. Peter Sloterdijk in his German tv show “Das Philosophische Quartett”, Erik.

Again:

And by the way: The ILP Nietzschean(ist)s are more than the ILP Kantian(ist)s. The majority is always right? No!

“Nietzsche … next to Nietzsche”? …?
Do you mean Nietzsche’s mental illness?
Like: Binswanger … next to Binswanger?

Again:

Arminius wrote:

Good point

But I don’t, really, think Prismatic is a fanatic or imposter; he has been cool-tempered and even honest ( he made jabs at Kant ).

If anyone is a fanatic, imposter, pompous, it’s Fixed Cross.

I have also been following the discussion between Prismatic and Sauwelios with interest.

I hope the cogency of some of the arguments increases though.

I think looking at some facts and statistics about certain countries, for example China and Egypt, would show that this isn’t the case. Capital Punishment are still practiced in both cases, and China executes the most people in the world annually.

Here is an article about state owned industries producing instruments of torture in China:

https://www.amnesty.org/en/articles/news/2014/09/china-s-booming-torture-trade-revealed/

and here’s an article about the ‘mysognistic’ practice of female infanticide and abortions in china: http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/the-ugliest-form-of-misogyny-sex-selective-abortions-and-the-war-on-baby-gi/

and yet humans have survived and continued to reproduce in China for the past 2000 years, and possesses the highest population in the world.

I don’t think you can make an argument that their future survival is in danger unless you can tell the future, because there is no way of knowing if they will take measures to avert disaster which include reducing these “moral abominations” from your list.

Sauwelios asked:

As far as I can see, the closest you’ve come to answering his question is this:

You say the “increased trend” (of the reductions in the list above) “as backed by the inherent moral impulse is a sign of ‘good’”, but that doesn’t explain how the trend and the “moral impulse” in humanity which you speak of is a sign of ‘good’.

How are you defining good? Are you defining good as moral?

If you are then in the context of the quote above you would only be saying “This increasing trend as backed by the inherent moral impulse is a sign of [morality]” which would be saying nothing.

Are you saying that survival is good and so it is on the basis of survival alone you can affirm those trends as good?

If so, is survival unconditionally good? In a country like China where there is still some of the trends you indicated as declining elsewhere, is survival still good? Also, if survival continues under these conditions without the trends you indicated, does that mean that there are other factors of survival which are of equal validity and might even supercede the trends you indicated as aiding survival?

Also, would survival be good under all conditions?

Another question, if someone could survive in a state where the trends you indicated were regularly practiced, but the same individual, nor those he/she cared about, was not subject to them (did not experience them against his person) but even perhaps enacted them on others, but also while enjoying other benefits, such as physical goods, admiration, music, etc. would the situation for this individual be good or bad, and why?

Finally, I think it would be helpful to know, what is the quality which makes a thing good? What measure can we use to identify what is good?

You forgot one, Erik.

Arminius: The synthesis works both ways, and progressively, as has been pointed out, it works out fine. Causation cn work both ways, an effect can become a cuse, retroactively? How? You may ask? Well, categorically. If You wore to assign moral principles for posterity, the question of forseeability arises, and intelligent estimates csn be made as to their effected outcome. Conversely, connection may be attempted, between the effects and the closely resembling models which set them up in the firstplace, factoring in the degrees of varience. In this way, philosophers who have effected each other, can/may be evaluated on basis of such effects. Since, Kant did not eliminate metaphisics, only sewed it up, his insight is ,largely intuitive. So is Nietzhe’s. In thismprescription, Kan’t ‘should’ have categorically not given Nietzche the opportunity for refutation, albeit through Hegel’s absolutism.

Kant’s transcendental arguments are of this type.

Obe:

[size=120]Number of my last questions: 9.
Number of your last answers: 0.5.[/size]

Your “answers” are very deficient.

:violence-hammer:

Nietzsche said nothing his whole career.
Kant made contributions to epistemology and ethics, as well as astronomy and maths.

Thank you, Artful Pauper, for your attempt at streamlining my discussion with Prismatic567. I think you have understood and clarified what I’m driving at.

In order to do so, I must first be sure I understand your proposition. Let me go all the way back to my first post in your “Humans are Born with a Sense of Morality?” thread (don’t worry, I won’t be going into the Picht quote again at this point). Let us look closely at what was said there:

Now in order to understand what I asked there, it may be helpful to know that I subsequently thought I had been mistaken. I had taken the phrase “moral impulses”, for example, to mean that you considered these impulses moral, as opposed to immoral. In other words, I had taken your use of the word “moral” to be prescriptive. Then, however, I came to think that I had probably been mistaken; that I had read that prescription into your words, and that you had really meant the word “moral” in a purely descriptive sense–that you had called those impulses moral because they pertained to the phenomenon we just happen to call “morality”. Those impulses were then only moral in the sense that the impulse to breathe, for instance, is non-moral.

Since then, I’ve been trying to determine whether your proposition was indeed merely descriptive. Your continuing failure to understand what I’m saying, however, (which may indeed be at least as much my fault as yours) has kept me in doubt–has kept suggesting to me that your proposition was prescriptive after all. To make sure it was descriptive, I might ask at this point: Do you consider humanity’s survival a good thing, a value, at all? Do you not just consider it a fact? Just as Darwinism, for example, does not consider the dodo’s extinction a bad thing, but just a fact?

At this point, I’m afraid that I may not have been mistaken initially at all. Perhaps you do not understand what I’m driving at because you consider the items on your list to be obviously good. In order to clarify my problem with that, I will share with you part of a Facebook discussion from November 2012. I’m Oliver.

[size=95]Chad: “Oliver, I would have thought that, if a moral theory entails that, say, the Emperor Palpatine (from Star Wars) is some kind of moral exemplar, then this would constitute a decisive counterexample to the theory. Is your idea that N’s moral theory is somehow impervious (even in principle) to counterexamples? Is this true generally of all moral theories on your view? Do you think it would be reasonable for an act utilitarian, for example, to simply ignore the standard counterexamples to his view?”

Oliver: “Yes, because counterexamples presuppose a given moral standard.”

Chad: “Suppose then that I said that there is exactly one thing that is morally wrong: wearing a wristwatch. How else could you refute this theory than by pointing out that it is open to obvious counterexamples?”
(This comment was liked by Dereck.)

Dereck: “[1]^”

Oliver: “No, suppose that I said that thing about wearing a wristwatch. Now give me a counterexample.”

Chad: “No problem. A man rapes a woman while wearing no wristwatch. That’s a case in which the proposed (absurd) analysis is clearly going to fail. For something wrong has obviously been done in this case, but the theory entails the falsehood that no wrong action has been performed.”

Oliver: “Nothing wrong has been done, since the only thing that is morally wrong is wearing a wristwatch. It’s fine for a man to rape a woman.”[/size]


  1. This is—at least one reason—why moral nihilism is untenable ↩︎

So are yours to my implied questions. You do not have a monopoly on questioning.

Everyone has a monopoly on questioning. Everyone is allowed to ask questions. Everyone has the right to note that his questions are not sufficiently answered. :slight_smile:

thats again, debatlable. if everyone has a right to monopoly only a capacity to attain it will prevent chaos. therefore lack of capacity is a saving grace.
of what do capacity consists of? a masure of strength , mixed with convincing rhetoric gaining popular
support. Minus that hostility is engendered by frustraion, and that stymied can and does at times result in open conflict. that is not the aim of dialogue.