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/lit/ - Literature

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511623 No.511623 [Reply] [Original]

Immanuel Kant, your opinion /lit/ ?
In b4 Kant Attack Ad.

>> No.511627

>>511623

the more analytic he became the more full of shit his work became

but his more casual essays are nice, like "what is enlightenment"

>> No.511626

How can I have an opinion on someone whom I've never read..?

>> No.511628

Unreadable. Get a book about him but don't read the man.

>> No.511630

inb4 Ayn Rand altruism rage

>> No.511635

talks a load of shit

>> No.511643

"Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose" is the only thing I've read from him, made sense to me.

>> No.511645

>>511623

One of the most important Western philosophers, although wrong about most things.

>> No.511649

I'm too scared to read this shit, I think I'm just too retarded to understand this.

>> No.511651

Many gems are to be found within his corpus. His work is mandatory reading for the philosophically inclined--rightly so.

Schopenhauer is much better though.

>> No.511658

>>511645
Actually he is completely correct about everything.

>> No.511667
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511667

>>511658

>> No.511666

>>511649
It takes years to understand Kant and really isn't worth it from what I can gather from those who have made the effort.

>> No.511665

>>511649

Then just get a good guide. Paul Guyer's is pretty decent.

>> No.511662

Pointed philosophy in the right direction even though the twentieth century saw it start walking backwards instead.

>> No.511668

Philosophy tends towards the dry and boring, but Kant was a master of snore lit.

>> No.511674

>>511666

Tosh. Anyone who tells you this is either someone who's taken a reasonable amount of time and understood Kant and who then wants to make it seem like they did a lot more work or someone who's never engaged with Kant. It's the same with something like Finnegans Wake. Sure, you might pick up something new every time you read it, but neither of these things are SO HARD that you need TEN MILLION READS and a LIFETIME OF STUDY to understand.

>> No.511679

>>511674

prove you know what the fuck you are talking about or go make me a sandwich.

>> No.511685

>>511679
That doesn't even matter because that person is completely right

>> No.511686

>>511679

I teach philosophy professionally, and I've taught Kant in the classroom and seen people understand what the hell he was talking about who previously had never engaged with him. Start with the Groundwork and the Prolegomena, work through the Criticisms slowly and reading plenty of secondary material and you'll broadly understand Kant within a reasonable period of time. If you want to, that is.

>> No.511692

>>511686
To go slightly off topic. What is philosophy for?

>> No.511697

>>511686

What philosophical position do you take?

>> No.511699

>>511686
That doesn't prove anything. Say something insightful about Kant's ideas or show yoru tits pls

>> No.511703

>>511649
You might also want to go for Hehel instead.

>> No.511712

>>511703
Heh.

>> No.511711
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511711

>>511692

philosophy is for smart people who get paid to sit in ivory towers, think, meditate on transcendental topics, and then criticize everyone else for being subject to the human condition. Essentially they are wizards.

everyone else, is basically a pawn. Scientists, plumbers, technicians, and construction workers, poets, artists, musicians, all support philosophers through practical means or by providing entertainment.

>> No.511723

>>511692

Broadly speaking, I think of philosophy as a subspecies of literature. Philosophy departments generally could be subsumed into comparative literature departments. In fact, I'd like to see that. So what is "literature" for? That's a pretty general question, so the general answer I'd give off the top of my head right now is that it provides us with a variety of vocabularies that serve different purposes at different times and also with further vocabularies that allow us to make further and further distinctions. Maybe that sounds hopelessly vague, but I'm not anything like a Platonist, so I don't think that I could really provide a satisfactory answer at the level of generality you're asking the question at without abdicating an emphasis on contingent circumstances and so forth.

If you're asking personally, I think literature (including philosophy) is generally "good for" encouraging empathy and deepening the capacity for greater articulation of ideas and so forth.

>>511697

Broadly speaking, I'm interested in pragmatism/neopragmatism, the relationship between deconstruction and strains of thought in analytic philosophy, the history of science, and the relevance of certain post-religious theological discourses to humanistic ethics.

>> No.511731

>>511723
So are you wiser or more deeply feeling than the philosophically ignorant?

>> No.511742
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511742

>>511723

good luck subsuming analytic/symbolic logic in a Lit department, people would be failing left and right.

ITT: english majors think they can do philosophy

>> No.511744

>>511731

Ahaha. I think the term "wisdom" and its derivatives is sort of useless in our culture.

That being said, not really or necessarily. I know plenty of people who aren't academics who read widely and are educated and are plenty empathetic, intelligent, sophisticated, etc. I also know people who are widely read academics who are massive dicks.

So reading widely doesn't necessarily cause you to become a more compassionate or empathetic person, but I certainly don't think it hurts.

I don't think this this is a particularly controversial perspective to have about education, particularly a solid education in the humanities. But feel free to attack me as an "elitist," if that's where you're going.

>> No.511751

>>511744

I think you would enjoy this:

www.rational-skepticism.org

>> No.511755

>>511744
You still haven't said anything insightful about Kant you fucking insipid cunt

>> No.511756

>>511742

I've studied symbolic logic through modal logics, and it's not nearly as necessary to the majority of analytic philosophy as analytic philosophers would like you to believe. Sure, there are plenty of insular scholastics who think analytic philosophy is about fellating Kripke, but that's not really true. That being said, for the most part analytic philosophy these days is committing slow suicide.

>> No.511760

>>511751

I'll look into it.

>>511755

Probably because you're acting like a damn tomfool, and I don't really feel like talking to you because of it.

>> No.511777

>>511744
I'm not at all intending to attack you. I love poetry, one of the reasons is that poetry provides me almost with a sampler of feeling and exempla that I find useful so I understand what you mean when you say "encouraging empathy and deepening the capacity for greater articulation of ideas and so forth".

What I struggle with is the dozens of theories of perception and reality. Leibniz's monads etc. Does learning about that serve any purpose?

(if you just enjoy it that would be a perfectly valid purpose).

>> No.511785

>>511692
Philosophy is essentially a language that deals with highly abstract subject matter on a very poorly formalized level. Although the lack of formal structure makes philosophy pretty useless from the practical viewpoint it provides insight into general ideas applicable in all areas of human knowledge. So a practical person can use these ideas to meditate on and produce a more formalized "models" suitable for immediate use.

>> No.511788

>>511760

Make sure to check out the philosophy section :)

>> No.511794

>>511777

Oh, okay.

Oh, you know, I think learning about monads and so forth is probably a waste of time. There are vast shoals of really abstruse philosophy that didn't really have that much historical impact and is really only relevant to someone studying the history of philosophy in great depth. I mean, if you enjoy it, go for it, but I generally think that the "canon" of philosophical texts that the "educated" person needs to have read (or, rather, SHOULD read) is a bit different than plenty of my colleagues.

>> No.511802

>>511794

I don't think I used the word shoals correctly. What the hell word am I thinking of.

>> No.511811

>>511802
Shoals works as a metaphor. Did you mean schools?

>> No.511815

>>511811

No. "Amounts." It doesn't matter, if you know what I meant.

>> No.511825

>>511802
Well, uh, probably schools.

>> No.511834

>>511794
Studying philosophers like Descartes, Leibniz, Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, and so on is far from a waste of time. Even if their proposed solutions aren't satisfactory, seeing how and why they came to their solutions can be very enlightening and show how deep these questions are.

>> No.511841

>>511834
But if nobody has got any correct answers what do we gain by knowing exactly how deep our ignorance is? Isn't a rough estimate of ignorance enough?

>> No.511844

>>511834

>Studying philosophers like Descartes, Leibniz, Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, and so on is far from a waste of time.

Sure. I didn't say that we should eschew philosophers from that past. Far from it.

Even if their proposed solutions aren't satisfactory, seeing how and why they came to their solutions can be very enlightening

Yes. I agree. That being said, some works of so-called canonical philosophy provide solutions to problems I don't think are very enlightening or interesting anymore.

>and show how deep these questions are.

Some of them are "deep;" some of them are shallow. I'm not saying they should be abandoned, but I think there are scales and priorities. But then I don't really believe that philosophical questions are "eternal," etc.

>> No.511851

>>511841

You're assuming that there are eternal questions that somehow exist apart from circumstance. I don't think there are. That being said, it can be extraordinarily useful to see how people try to solve problems and provides answers to questions (and, in doing so, how they often redefine the questions out of existence, etc.).

>> No.511874

>>511851
Thanks for your thoughtful posts. I'll stick to obsessing over poetry but maybe I'll read some more philosophical poetry like Lucretius!

>> No.511881
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511881

>>511623

this is what philosophy is for

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2ICPQNqPSg

>> No.511882

>>511874

You might try someone like Martin Buber.