On Fri, 15 Mar 1996, jln wrote:
> 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.
>
I apologize for leaving itso loose. What I meant, was that it seems to
me that the issue of fascism is an important issue to everybody, but that
the quesiton as to the proper interpretation of Kant, Descartes or
Foucault, by comparison isnot important.>
> >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 appreciate how careful you have been in expressing yourself, and will
put more effort in on my end.
I am going to have to go back and re-read the Foucault piece, "What is
enlightenment?" But in the meantime, I suspect that this idea that a
blackmail is going on in playing rational against irrational discourses
off against eachother, could be one reason that some people have read
Fpoucault as a young consrvative. One issue that remains at the
background of the present topic, but that also has effects in the more
traditional areas of philosophy is what one understands by science. The
german wissenschaft inlcudes jurisprudence, and history, and is therefore
not, at least not uncontroversially reducible to, or modelled on
mathematical physics. Among anglo-speaking countries, this wqide an
extension for the term science is much less acceptable. The problem then
arises when in claiming to restrict rationality to scientific discourse,
there are people who apply that standard as meanign simply,
intersubkectivbely verifiable, or in principle intersubjectively
verifiable. The only kind of claims that are in principle excluded by
such a standard are those claims that are essentially private.
To argue for allowing as rational claims that do not meet the standard of
at least in principle intersubjectively verifiable, is to give in to the
enthusiasm that Kant was very concerned to rule out as the basis of any
justificaiton, whther epistemic or moral.
Antoine
------------------