Monday, October 19, 2009

Keith Ward on the Impact of Kant

5 comments:

Blue Devil Knight said...

Kant is amazing, my main regret is that I still have never read past the first half of the first Critique, an amazing book. He is in my top five list.

Victor Reppert said...

Did you ever read Allison's essay Kant's Refutation of Materialism?"
Henry Allison, "Kant's Refutation of Materialism," The Monist 79 (April 1989) 190-209. It is also in his book Idealism and Freedom.

http://books.google.com/books?id=Z6ajxMdPA1AC&pg=PP1&dq=%22idealism+and+freedom%22#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Victor Reppert said...

There's some sword-crossing in there with a certain husband-and-wife philosophy of mind team that were, at least at the time, Allison's colleagues. Forget their names offhand.

amandalaine said...

Thank you for the link!!

J said...

Kant amazes at times, but only with certain reservations, and by understanding his assumptions, like this one:

All objects of any experience possible to us 'are nothing but appearances' (A491).

That may sound profound at first. Then, considering many basic human experiences--say like tonight's Din-Din--one realizes there is a befuddling and obscure aspect about Kantian phenomenalism, which doesn't jibe with our experience as human-animals. That's not to say pure naturalism is the alternative--humans are capable of rationality-- but the need for Food (and other necessaries of life--like, shekels) does not reduce to mere appearance.

Unlike the major empiricists--say Hobbes--Kant never seems to acknowledge the human body, or at best it is assumed as one of the givens of experience. He's fundamentally retrograde, anti-economic, anti-political. Indeed, Hobbes' criticisms of Descartes' incorporeality apply to Kant, with a few modifications.