In response to Joe and jln, I think that we are arguing at cross
purposes. I am not tryingto convince you that Kant and Hegel are cool.
I don't understand the way you two see the effect of philosophers in the
courseof events. I am certain that you guys don't understand Kant, and
I'm even more certain that understanding Kant is not even remotely an
impoortant thing to do. The role that Kant interpretation has played in
the history of philoosphy is a complicated one. I have a feeling that
Kant's bad reputation among marxists comes from the collusion between
neo-Kantians and revisionist marxists like Bernstein, and perhaps
Lassalle. Neo-Kantians, in particular, Marburg neo-Kantians for whom, by
the way Foucault had some admiration, argued against thew scientistic
bias of Marxists, in part for its laughably inadequate understanding of
science, but at least as importantly because it did not allow for any
freedom.
On the topic of freedom, I wonder where the readiong of Kant that you
both subscribe to originated. The idea that practical reason is only in
the noumenal realm is not a Kantian doctrine. Kant's argument was that
the idea of a fully deterministic universe is logically impossible. The
idea is incoherent. This antinomy was institutionalized by Russell's
demolition of Frege's logicist project; it was resurrected by Hilbert's
finitistic proof theory, and reburied by Godel's incompletness results,
resurrected by Einsteins general theory of rletivity and buried by the
Copenhagen programm ofquantum physics. The possibility of freedom, of the
causality of the will is the flip side of the underdetermination of
theory by fact. Since, even in the case of science, we must choose our
theories, and not simply read them off the universe, we are to that
extent responsible for those theories. In addition, this
underdetermination has as a consequence the opening up of a space for the
inrteraction between the causality of nature and the causality of freedom.
The poin that follows from Kant's views, and that is, in my opinion, and
that does separate us, is that in trying to resurrect some altenrative to
scientific reasoning, especially trying to legitimate some aesthetic
alternative to scientific reasoning, you're falling back into
irraitonalism. If by aesthetic you don't mean somesolipsistic, private
privileged moment, then I don't see what distinguishes it from scientific
reasoning.
Antoine
------------------
purposes. I am not tryingto convince you that Kant and Hegel are cool.
I don't understand the way you two see the effect of philosophers in the
courseof events. I am certain that you guys don't understand Kant, and
I'm even more certain that understanding Kant is not even remotely an
impoortant thing to do. The role that Kant interpretation has played in
the history of philoosphy is a complicated one. I have a feeling that
Kant's bad reputation among marxists comes from the collusion between
neo-Kantians and revisionist marxists like Bernstein, and perhaps
Lassalle. Neo-Kantians, in particular, Marburg neo-Kantians for whom, by
the way Foucault had some admiration, argued against thew scientistic
bias of Marxists, in part for its laughably inadequate understanding of
science, but at least as importantly because it did not allow for any
freedom.
On the topic of freedom, I wonder where the readiong of Kant that you
both subscribe to originated. The idea that practical reason is only in
the noumenal realm is not a Kantian doctrine. Kant's argument was that
the idea of a fully deterministic universe is logically impossible. The
idea is incoherent. This antinomy was institutionalized by Russell's
demolition of Frege's logicist project; it was resurrected by Hilbert's
finitistic proof theory, and reburied by Godel's incompletness results,
resurrected by Einsteins general theory of rletivity and buried by the
Copenhagen programm ofquantum physics. The possibility of freedom, of the
causality of the will is the flip side of the underdetermination of
theory by fact. Since, even in the case of science, we must choose our
theories, and not simply read them off the universe, we are to that
extent responsible for those theories. In addition, this
underdetermination has as a consequence the opening up of a space for the
inrteraction between the causality of nature and the causality of freedom.
The poin that follows from Kant's views, and that is, in my opinion, and
that does separate us, is that in trying to resurrect some altenrative to
scientific reasoning, especially trying to legitimate some aesthetic
alternative to scientific reasoning, you're falling back into
irraitonalism. If by aesthetic you don't mean somesolipsistic, private
privileged moment, then I don't see what distinguishes it from scientific
reasoning.
Antoine
------------------