Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Kant

  • Ding an sich

    The bell you never know is there.

  • Can Kant Refer to God?

     Ed Buckner raises this question, and he wants my help with it.  How can I refuse?  I'll say a little now, and perhaps more later. Kant was brought up a rationalist within the Wolffian school, but then along came David Hume who awoke him from his dogmatic slumber.  This awakening begins his Critical period in…

  • The Paradox of Antirealism and Butchvarov’s Solution

    In his highly  original Anthropocentrism in Philosophy: Realism, Antirealism, Semirealism (Walter de Gruyter 2015)  Panayot Butchvarov argues that philosophy in its three main branches, epistemology, ethics, and metaphysics, needs to be freed from its anthropocentrism. Philosophy ought to be “dehumanized.” This entry will examine how Butchvarov proposes to dehumanize metaphysics.  These Butchvarov posts are exercises toward…

  • More Liberal Insanity: ‘Trigger Warning’ for Kant’s Critiques

    A tip of the hat to London Karl for bringing the following to my attention.  Karl writes, "I love your country, but it gets more absurd by the day." It does indeed.  Contemporary liberals are engaged in a project of "willful enstupidation," to borrow a fine phrase from John Derbyshire.  Every day there are multiple…

  • Dissertation Advice on the Occasion of Kant’s Birthday

    Immanuel Kant was born on this day in 1724. He died in 1804. My dissertation on Kant, which now lies 37 years in the past, is dated 22 April 1978.  But if, per impossibile, my present self were Doktorvater to my self of 37 years ago, my doctoral thesis might not have been approved! As…

  • Who is Caius?

    Robert Paul Wollf here replies with wit and lefty snark to a charming request by one Pamela N., a personal assistant, who wants to know who Immanuel Kant is referring to when he writes, "Caius is a man; man is mortal; therefore, Caius is mortal."  Pamela confesses, I will admit, I have not read Kant's…

  • Kant, Supererogation, and Imperfect Duties

    Can Kant's ethical scheme  accommodate the supererogatory? If obligatory actions are those that one is duty-bound to perform, a supererogatory action is one that is above and beyond the call of duty. Michael A. Monsoor's throwing himself on a live grenade to save his Navy SEAL buddies is a paradigmatic example. But in a wide…

  • Travel Disruptive, but Good for the Soul

    For me, travel is disruptive and desolating. A little desolation, however, is good for the soul, whose tendency is to sink into complacency. Daheim, empfindet man nicht so sehr die Unheimlichkeit des Seins. Travel knocks me out of my natural orbit, out of the familiar with its gauzy filters, into the strangeness of things.  Even…

  • Dispute About Kant Erupts in Gunfire

    Story here.  The Russian boys were lined up for beer; perhaps one of them couldn't wait his 'transcendental' turn and the other, forsaking duty for inclination, shot him categorically albeit phenomenally.  Or maybe the shooter was attempting to demonstrate that the transcendentally ideal can also be empirically real.  Or perhaps the shooter was a Randian hothead and the…

  • Saying and Showing

    Again, show what?  'There are objects' is nonsense.  One cannot say that there are objects.  This is shown by the use of variables.  But what is shown if not that there are objects?  There, I've said it! Ray Monk reports on a discussion between Wittgenstein and Russell.  L. W. balked at Russell's 'There are at least…

  • Pleonasm of the Day: ‘Negative Attack Ad’

    I once heard John McCain use the phrase, 'negative attack ad.' As opposed to what? Positive attack ad? You may enjoy this Kant attack ad.

  • Kant on Ignava Ratio, Lazy Reason

    Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Philosophical Theology, p. 25:      Theology cannot serve to explain the appearances of nature to us.     In general it is not a correct use of reason to posit God as the     ground of everything whose explanation is not evident to us. On the     contrary, we must first gain insight into the…

  • Kant on Peccatum Originale Originans and Peccatum Originale Originatum

    1. An important distinction for understanding the doctrine of original sin is that between originating original sin (peccatum originale originans) and originated original sin (peccatum originale originatum).  This post will explain the distinction and then consider Immanuel Kant's reasons for rejecting originated original sin.  It is important to realize that Kant does accept something like original…

  • From the Mail: Bryan Magee on Kant and the Theistic Proofs

    Dear Dr. Vallicella, I am of the understanding that one of your post-graduate degrees focussed on Kant. With your knowledge of said philosopher I wonder if I might trouble you to answer a few questions for me? These questions pertain to Kant's criticism's of the cosmological argument for God's existence. I know that this argument…

  • Rise and Shine With Manny

    For, "The bed is a nest for a whole flock of illnesses." (Immanuel Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties, tr. Gregor, p. 183) I read Kant and about Kant at an impressionable age, and it really is a pleasure plowing through his texts again as I have been doing recently. I suspect my early rising…