Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Kant

  • Immanuel Kant Versus Israel?

    Old Kant man that I am, I have added a question mark to the title of an extremely interesting piece by Daniel Pipes.  In it, Pipes summarizes and comments upon an article by Yoram Hazony,  "Israel Through European Eyes."  Worth careful study.

  • More with Mason on Miracles

    Franklin Mason e-mails (mid-June 2007): I'd meant to get back to a little point you'd made a few days ago. You said this: "I think of creation as an ongoing 'process': God sustains the world in being moment by moment. But at each moment, the totality of what exists is completely determinate: for each individual…

  • Kant on Divine Concurrence and Miracles as Complementa ad Sufficientiam

    The question concerning the possibility of miracles is connected to a wider question concerning the relation of secondary or natural causes and the causa prima, God. How do these two 'orders' of causation fit together? 1. One extreme position is occasionalism according to which all causal power is exercised by God. For the occasionalist, God…

  • Kant on Miracles

    Earlier posts uncovered epistemic as opposed to ontic conceptions of miracles in Augustine and in Spinoza; but Immanuel Kant too seems to favor an epistemic approach. "If one asks: What is to be understood by the word miracle? it may be explained . . . by saying that they are events in the world the…

  • Kant on Abraham and Isaac

    What I said about Abraham and Isaac yesterday is so close to Kant's view of the matter that I could be accused of repackaging Kant's ideas without attribution. When I wrote the post, though, I had forgotten the Kant passage. So let me reproduce it now. It is from The Conflict of the Faculties (1798), the…

  • 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 31 years in the past, is dated 22 April 1978.  But if, per impossibile, my present self were Doktorvater to my self of 31 years ago, my doctoral thesis might not have been approved! As…

  • Kant’s Paean to Sincerity

    As a prelude to forthcoming posts on hypocrisy  as seen by Kant and Hegel, here is a Kantian hymn of praise to sincerity.  From Immanuel Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone (trs. Greene & Hudson), p. 178, n. 2:  O sincerity! Thou Astraea, that hast fled from earth to heaven, how mayst thou (the basis…