Kant

[Bloomfield]

There was an Idealist named Kant
And no one was sure what he meant,
IB called him Romantic,
And Bloomfield grew frantic,
And Cran tried to get it but can't.

Bravo!

[Jack]

There was an Idealist named Kant
And no one was sure what he meant,
IB called him Romantic,
And Bloomfield grew frantic,
And Cran tried to get it but can't.

Bravo!

I've a feeling that our dear Walden will make a superb English major, upon his re-entry to college.

[Joseph E. Smith]

Bravo!

I've a feeling that our dear Walden will make a superb English major, upon his re-entry to college.

I couldn't agree more. Well done sir!

[Wombat]

Kant's Critique takes off where most systematic metaphysics ends so to get even a superficial grasp of it, you need to have a solid working knowledge of what a metaphysical system is.

For a reasonable understanding, do a philosophy major with loads of systematic metaphysics and leave Kant until after you've finished. Take a graduate class in the Critique after, and only after, you have a detailed knowedge of several metaphysical systems.

For a very superficial grasp, read Descartes' Meditations, copious amounts of Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley and Hume, good secondary sources on all of the above, and then the Prolegomena. My own philosophical position is, in a very broad sense, neo-Kantian, as is the position of a great many philosophers in the second half of the 20th century and into this one. I think Kant's insight into our epistemic predicament is brilliant and pretty much the compulsory starting point for anybody who wants a sophisticated grasp of the major figures of the 20th century. On points of detail, though, he ranges from brilliant to embarrassing and beyond to incomprehensible. But there is no point engaging with the details until you can locate his project in the history of philosophy up to his time.

[Doug_Tipple]

I don't mean to be anti-intellectual, but arguments about "pure reason" and the like I kant tolerate while I am trying to deal with global warming, a Vietnam-like war in Iraq and Afganistan, and arthritic pains in places that I kannot mention.

[Wombat]

I don't mean to be anti-intellectual, but arguments about "pure reason" and the like I kant tolerate while I am trying to deal with global warming, a Vietnam-like war in Iraq and Afganistan, and arthritic pains in places that I kannot mention.

When I did a subject on Kant's metaphysics in my honours year, we referred to the Critique as Kant's Antique of Pure Treason.

Perhaps I'm being a bit hard in suggesting that it is impossible to grasp Kant's project without having done three years of philosophy beforehand. Those looking for a shortcut should perhaps read the best works in English by modern Kantians. In my opinion, they would be P.F. Strawson's Bounds of Sense for the metaphysics and, for the ethics, the works of Onora O'Neill—that's Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve to you Jimmie! But I find it hard to judge as I had worked my way through the whole Critique, or at least most of it, before attempting the secondary sources.

[Innocent Bystander]

Skimpily scant
Immanuel Kant
Said that freedom
Was what made us human

But it taxed his poor brain
When he tried to explain
How percepts were distinct
From their noumen.

[jim stone]

Joseph Immanuel Kant
When told to kiss his aunt
Obeyed the Categorical Must
But only just.

not mine; maybe Auden

[Jack]

Kant can't recant
Now that he is dead
Kant never meant
What many say he said

[Bloomfield]

For a very superficial grasp, read Descartes' Meditations, copious amounts of Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley and Hume, good secondary sources on all of the above, and then the Prolegomena.

I don't see why reading English empiricists would help you with Kant. Descartes and Leibniz I can see, and Hume I'll give you even though I still think that Hume didn't understand himself to be saying what Kant understood Hume to say. My own path was up from Duns Scotus through Spinoza, Hobbes, and then Kant. But then my understanding certainly qualifies as superficial. A brilliant way to delve into Kant, btw, is to read Schopenhauer, who was a great master of Kantian thought and (to some minds, including his own) significantly advanced it. There was, incidentally, an amazing degree of Kantian thought and understanding in Germany in the late 18th and early to mid 19th centuries, and many of the social, legal, and political movements and developments can only be understood against the backdrop of an almost folkloristic currency of Kantian thought at the time.

My own philosophical position is, in a very broad sense, neo-Kantian, as is the position of a great many philosophers in the second half of the 20th century and into this one. I think Kant's insight into our epistemic predicament is brilliant and pretty much the compulsory starting point for anybody who wants a sophisticated grasp of the major figures of the 20th century. On points of detail, though, he ranges from brilliant to embarrassing and beyond to incomprehensible. But there is no point engaging with the details until you can locate his project in the history of philosophy up to his time.

I dabble, of course, and am more interested in the normativity than I am in epistemology (not that you can understand one without the other), but I am perfectly content with the Prolegomena and the Metaphysics of Morals, nowadays. Still, my views are firmly neo-Kantian and I'm engaged in a long and probably fruitless campaign to explain to Anglo-Americans the difference between Is and Ought.

[Wombat]

I don't see why reading English empiricists would help you with Kant. Descartes and Leibniz I can see, and Hume I'll give you even though I still think that Hume didn't understand himself to be saying what Kant understood Hume to say.

It's not the only route but it best explains why it was Hume who woke Kant from his dogmatic slumbers. If you start with Descartes, you get to grasp the perceived need for epistemological foundationalism. The British empiricists help to undermine the idea that a satisfactory foundation could be found in rationalist principles although the received picture of Leibniz as a rationalist and Locke as an empiricist is way off the mark. (Leibniz was a Platonist and Locke an Aristotelian.) Berkeley, and then Hume, seem to show that empiricist foundationalism of the Cartesian kind leads inevitably to scepticism. That was the problem Kant faced: how to reconcile what is right about the demand for epistemic foundations with the evident fact that the attempt to meet that demand in either straightforward rationalist or empiricst terms seems doomed to failure. His solution—combine phenomenal realism with transcendental idealism—was stroke of genius, or so I think. I don't myself buy into transcendental idealism but I think the attempt to do metaphysics without separating out two perspectives on metaphysical questions as Kant did is a futile exercise in anti-modernist wishful thinking.

The German football team just synthesised the Swedish manifold pretty impressively, didn't they?

[Bloomfield]

I don't see why reading English empiricists would help you with Kant. Descartes and Leibniz I can see, and Hume I'll give you even though I still think that Hume didn't understand himself to be saying what Kant understood Hume to say.

It's not the only route but it best explains why it was Hume who woke Kant from his dogmatic slumbers. If you start with Descartes, you get to grasp the perceived need for epistemological foundationalism. The British empiricists help to undermine the idea that a satisfactory foundation could be found in rationalist principles although the received picture of Leibniz as a rationalist and Locke as an empiricist is way off the mark. (Leibniz was a Platonist and Locke an Aristotelian.) Berkeley, and then Hume, seem to show that empiricist foundationalism of the Cartesian kind leads inevitably to scepticism. That was the problem Kant faced: how to reconcile what is right about the demand for epistemic foundations with the evident fact that the attempt to meet that demand in either straightforward rationalist or empiricst terms seems doomed to failure. His solution—combine phenomenal realism with transcendental idealism—was stroke of genius, or so I think.

Interesting; I never thought that the English empiricists "helped undermine the idea that a satisfactory foundation could be found in rationalist principles." I always thought they just didn't get it.

On that note, I once attended a very interesting lecture on Locke by Jeremy Waldron (whom you might know), and I went up to him afterwards, and I said: "I enjoyed your talk tremendously, but I am afraid I have to tell you something. I hope this won't come as a shock, but Locke is not very highly regarded in German philosophy." He almost fell over laughing.

I don't myself buy into transcendental idealism but I think the attempt to do metaphysics without separating out two perspectives on metaphysical questions as Kant did is a futile exercise in anti-modernist wishful thinking.

Amen to that.

The German football team just synthesised the Swedish manifold pretty impressively, didn't they?

Yes. The Swedish goals were all phenomenal, but the German ones were noumenal. And noumenon wins over phenomenon every time.

[dfernandez77]

There was an Idealist named Kant
And no one was sure what he meant,
IB called him Romantic,
And Bloomfield grew frantic,
And Cran tried to get it but can't.

Kant can't recant
Now that he is dead
Kant never meant
What many say he said

Walden and Cranberry, you have squarely hit the hail on the nead - and well done. These modern philosophers like Kant, et al - they over-complicate. Two steps away from simplicity just gets you further from the path.

It's better to simply be, than to try to understand why.

I like my philosophy in soundbites.

The Way that can be experienced is not true;
The world that can be constructed is not true.

The Way manifests all that happens and may happen;
The world represents all that exists and may exist.

To experience without intention is to sense the world;
To experience with intention is to anticipate the world.

These two experiences are indistinguishable;
Their construction differs but their effect is the same.

Beyond the gate of experience flows the Way,
Which is ever greater and more subtle than the world.

道可道，
非常道。

名可名，
非常名。

無名天地之始。
有名萬物之母。
故常無欲以觀其妙。
常有欲以觀其徼。

此兩者同出而異名，
同謂之玄。

玄之又玄，
眾妙之門。

http://home.pages.at/onkellotus/TTK/_IndexTTK.html

Philosophy is better understood when you read it like comedy.

[Innocent Bystander]

I agree, Daniel. After a while, Western Philosophy seems to be more playing with the meanings of words than anything else. I think it's a linguistic consequence of the German Language on thought. Other philosophers in the West have tried to build on these, and get swept into the same whirlpool. No-one seems to get much past defining their terms. Eastern Philosophy seems to have seen it all before anyway.
I love the Tao. And the Vedas contain such a lot.

Without going out of my door I can see all things on Earth.
Without looking out of my window I can see all things under Heaven.

[herbivore12]

I agree, Daniel. After a while, Western Philosophy seems to be more playing with the meanings of words than anything else. I think it's a linguistic consequence of the German Language on thought.

Ooooohhhh! Somebody pull out their Wittgenstein, now, and go all crazy!

This could get way better than any Ultimate Fighting Championship match.

Well, except that the Western team would all go into a wood-paneled room somewhere to hash things out, and end up coming to blows amongst themselves (or maybe even resort to wielding the fireplace poker), while the Easterners all smiled either benignly or inscrutably at us from under their shade-trees. If one were to play to stereotypes, anyway.

(I have to admit that I could deal with the Prolegomena okay, but the Critique eluded me. I felt about it the same way I did about some advanced physics -- I'd sort of start to get it, and then it'd somehow squirm out of reach again. I suppose I could try again . . . In response to Bloomfield's evocation of Schopenhauer, I did find Schopenhauer's "On the Basis of Morality" to be a useful tool in coming to grips with some of Kant's thoughts on morality; the book is largely a critique of Kant's work, anyway, if I remember right.)