Two Stories of Kant Part 2: The Warbringer

In keeping with telling ourselves stories as to make Kant seem more important;

Well, waitaminute (pronounced wayminute), Huh? How could the most important philosopher of all time seem more important than he already is; that is, if you accept a system of Truth and Falsity based on Analysis how could it change anything? Either Kant is a great philosopher or he is not. Well, I might counter that sometimes it is just nice to get a story going. Read my first story of Kant if you want to know some more preliminary feelings I have about, well, preliminary feelings.


Kant 2:

Kant 2 is the Warbringer. The first was the peacemaker, who rationalized Newton and Leibniz from stabbing each other. Well, maybe not literally, but there is something to all of this. Leibniz and Newton, although not talked about enough, especially not Leibniz, are some of the starters of great traditions. Newtonian mechanics got us going into modern science. It was not simply that he regimented physics, it was that he posed that you could get scientific, (read: routine, verifiable, highly correlated and supposedly caused) measurements of reality. Leibnizians got us going into modern technology. I already told you he invented Binary and at least one of the first calculators (check it out for yourself http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz also the handy thing about this is that the invention of Binary is in the first paragraph, Thanks Wikipedia!). Everytime you, well, look at a computer screen, you are paying tribute to the late, great polimorphic Leibnizian system of Leibniz, ya monad.
But these two philosopher-scientists would have killed each other had they met. It was because of the calculus that they invented, but also because each thought his philosophy was correct.

Kant the warbringer broke them both.

Here's a metaphor, off the top of the old brain, if you could imagine a war where Great Britain (peculiarly as in the nationality of Newton) and Prussia or even later, Germany (ever so strangely just like the nationality of Leibniz) were fighting and then all of the sudden another large country comes in, like, say, Russia (just so happening to be the place of residence of Immanuel Kant) and messes up these first two so bad that they have to stop fighting, but still has significant losses, you might have a legitimate metaphorical comprehension of my consideration of Kant. And probably World Wars I and II.

The irony that these philosopher-scientists built the traditions which helped so many simultaneously built the traditions that would eventually kill so many does not escape me.

Warbringer. Killer. Ender of conflicts through war. Signs of victory and obvious achievement.

Did I say that Russia had significant concessions in World Wars I and II? Is there an applicable loss in this philosophical battle of wits?


Well first of all, I'm about to say yes, but I have to write in that I'm not making this metaphor to be juvenile. It's a bad tribute to good philosophy if we have to exaggerate too much. For a slight digression, same goes for drugs and music. If you have to do drugs in order to like the music, it's probably not good music. Sorry Grateful Dead.


This important concession, metaphorically (and exaggeratedly) similar to millions of Russians dying in World Wars I and II, is to some Skepticism. Kant shook hands with beef on this one; he made a deal with the devil.

Skepticism is exactly what it feels like, or what you should know it as. It's the most popular school of philosophy, whether we know it's around or not. It's like when you tell your friends that you're going to work out every day and they say, "I doubt it." Or you say you're going to get a 100 on the math test and all of your friends say that you're a philosophy major. I say, whatever guys you suck, and they say they are skeptical of that, too.

Skepticism, at its best, is when someone is ambivalent and sort of suspends judgment. At its worst, it is terrible insecurity and brings about terrible self-esteem issues; Skepticism at its worst might mean dismissing something before you really get to the, uh, reality. Some of my friends dismiss me when I think I have something really important by saying, "Jake, that's just your opinion, and you're entitled to your opinion but you can't force it on everyone." Knowledge, and true knowledge, is what human life is based on, and aside from obviously inappropriate metaphors I cannot stress this point enough.

How can you know anything? Perhaps the end of Empiricism, that is the blind grasping for scientific knowledge, is David Hume, who sort of shrugged when he realized that Skepticism wins out eventually. We could all be tripping on acid.

Kant broke through this. In fact, even his doctrine means to transcend, it's called, uh, Transcendentalism (diffferent from Transcendent, don't get confused like me). He said it's okay that all we know are appearances. And that's how he started his philosophy.