Waking up is really legitimate

Immanuel Kant used David Hume to wake up. In fact, he said something that all Kant Scholars and wannabe scholars have mentioned 100% of the time. He said, "David Hume woke me up from my dogmatic slumbers." I've ended up saying this so much to myself this semester that I've realized its syllabic structure.

You kids can play at home:

words syllable count
David Hume
1 2 3 3
Woke me up
1 2 3 3
from my
1 2 2
Dogmatic
1 2 3 3
Slumbers
1 2 2


Let it be known that this is a bastardization. Firstly, because I think the actual quote appears three or four times in The Critique of Pure Reason and various writings that Kant has. Secondly, because this is of course translated from the Prussian or German.


In Eastern Philosophy, waking up means growing awareness. This growing awareness is at best knowing what you are thinking and controlling what you are thinking. For people like me, I think in a stream of consciousness, which I might describe as a series of words and phrases. It's not always complete thoughts.

The hope is that when you realize you're thinking, you can realize how silly or stupid what you think is. So if your brain thinks, "I want to stab that guy," you might be able to stop your brain from doing that. The other thing is that if you do this you might be able to, hey presto, control your mind. So all of that eating to fill a void that you do is now gone.


There are mixed results always until you master the practice. How do you master the practice? 1 way is to just do it a lot. The other way is simply to stop the mindflow. This can be done by breathing, or taking in sense data. It's hard to think about how hard your day is when looking a really nice work of art or if you are being punched in the stomach. Good times!

How does this fit in to Western Philosophy? Well it turns out, at least in the way that I see it, that Empiricism has created a foundation for what is known as the American-English or Analytic School of philosophy. These people think you can solve life like a math problem. The alternate school , branching off from Descartes, is called the Continental School, where they think you can solve stuff with essays. Double dipping arises on both sides, however, and you're up to your neck faster than you are down to the meaning of life so to speak.....

But I might say that Eastern philosophy crops up in weird ways in Western Philosophy. I'm not really sure what else the Eastern School is all about. It has foundations in Buddhism and Confucianism, but after that I really don't know what it does.