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.
I disagree on both accounts here. Kant is very important simply becuase he
has such a large effect on all modern philosophy and because he is a
culminating point of problems latent in DesCartes.
>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.
Okay, this is where the argument gets difficult becuase we will all three
have to start quoting K and I for one do not have an easy reference of K.
I can do two things at this point. 1) my reading derives from Marcuse. 2)
the following citation is from The Grounding to the Metaphysics of Morals
section two.
"The problem of determining certainly and universally what action will
promote the happiness of a rational being is completely insoluable.
Therefore, regarding such action no imperative that in the strictest sense
could command what is to be done to make one happy is possible * inasmuch
as happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination.*"
>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
Antoine, your falliong into the balckmail of modrrn philosophy as FOucault
has it. Foucault holds that to beleive/say/hold that one is either for
rationality or irrational is a blackmail (What is Enlightenment, Foucault
Reader, p. 43, he says this in other places). There are at least two froms
of reasoning in the world, anbd more if one beleives Foucault. But for the
basic two, there is scientific rationaltiy and then narrative (in Lyotard's
language) or traditionalistic (in Robin Horton's langauge) or something
along tradtional non-scientific thought (as found in anthropological and
historical studies).
I don't know exactly what distinguishes aesthetic reasoning from
scienfitific, that is what my studies are focusing on now. But I would
refer one to The Postmodern COndition, by Lyotard for a start.
JLN
jlnich1@xxxxxxxxxxx
Department of Philosophy
University of Kentucky
Lexington, KY. 40509
------------------
>I'm even more certain that understanding Kant is not even remotely an
>impoortant thing to do.
I disagree on both accounts here. Kant is very important simply becuase he
has such a large effect on all modern philosophy and because he is a
culminating point of problems latent in DesCartes.
>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.
Okay, this is where the argument gets difficult becuase we will all three
have to start quoting K and I for one do not have an easy reference of K.
I can do two things at this point. 1) my reading derives from Marcuse. 2)
the following citation is from The Grounding to the Metaphysics of Morals
section two.
"The problem of determining certainly and universally what action will
promote the happiness of a rational being is completely insoluable.
Therefore, regarding such action no imperative that in the strictest sense
could command what is to be done to make one happy is possible * inasmuch
as happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination.*"
>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
Antoine, your falliong into the balckmail of modrrn philosophy as FOucault
has it. Foucault holds that to beleive/say/hold that one is either for
rationality or irrational is a blackmail (What is Enlightenment, Foucault
Reader, p. 43, he says this in other places). There are at least two froms
of reasoning in the world, anbd more if one beleives Foucault. But for the
basic two, there is scientific rationaltiy and then narrative (in Lyotard's
language) or traditionalistic (in Robin Horton's langauge) or something
along tradtional non-scientific thought (as found in anthropological and
historical studies).
I don't know exactly what distinguishes aesthetic reasoning from
scienfitific, that is what my studies are focusing on now. But I would
refer one to The Postmodern COndition, by Lyotard for a start.
JLN
jlnich1@xxxxxxxxxxx
Department of Philosophy
University of Kentucky
Lexington, KY. 40509
------------------