Kant, Immanuel: a wrong turn to absolutes.

Geoffrey R. Hamilton
2003
Last revised June 14, 2007

Kant wants (irrelevantly) a "happy" answer to Hume's conclusion that knowledge is untenable. Kant believes he gets it with his 'new' reason for living: ignore the unknowable-ness of life by reasoning from the inside out. His idea is almost the same as Plato's idealism and just as useless - that is, he supposes innate knowledge makes meaning certain which incidentally justifies every assertion he makes. None of his claims are actually toward an a priori knowledge. To be generous (to Plato too), he could be actually referring to an internalized societal conditioning which is mistaken later to be a 'gut' reaction. Rule following and playing with reasons are also mistaken by many for a priori judgements. There is innate information in us, but innateness does nothing to improve the absoluteness of knowledge, it can only provide, skills, a position, and a context.

Kant repeats himself when reacting to Hume's discovery that an innate trick allows us all to see causality. Kant supposes, as Plato did, that the knowledge we are born with is somehow True - ipso facto - so our desire to see causes must be transcendent. (Kant's view is a almost a mystery to me. He is part of a long line of 'greats' from Democritus to Nietzsche who see a disquieting issue about life and feel a need to play the redeemer. ) There has long been a belief that people and other animals have bred instincts. Instead of this idea, which is the simplest and most tested answer, Kant chooses the path of least reality and reverses the course of much of philosophy into a complete misunderstanding of what a priori can mean. Kant does this when he asserts that three principle ideas of reason - God, freedom and immortality are absolutes. Kelley L. Ross says on his absolutism, "Kant always believed that the rational structure of the mind reflected the rational structure of the world, even of things-in-themselves...." (friesian) Kant makes up for his past failures by the additional failures of these divine 'catch 22' s. Why should 'God' get special consideration next to all the other waco assertions that are normally ignored. If you want before experience to answer a problem it can only be via a genetically encoded source of knowledge - and even this source is based on a past generation's experiences.

His ethical position is called a third way after virtue and consequences. His categorical imperative, or absolute moral law, is the idea that we should do only what would be practically good if everyone did it. But his idea is another flop. The example of theft is used in support of it. If everyone stole the world would be a mess. However, we can easily deduce that many normal and useful things, if done by everyone, would cause a similar mess: ie if everyone turned right at an intersection, or became leader of the United States. Just about everything is wrong given his method. And the categorical imperative is not much of a guide if you need another one to tell you where the guide is allowed to take you.

His (and all) synthetic/analytic distinctions are also useless. Nothing is true or acceptable base on a statement. Not 5 plus 7 equals 12, not 'a bachelor is not married', not even 'Socrates is a man'. Agreements and contexts make the only relevant difference to statements.

Apologists for Kant like to say he avoided the relativist's paradox that 'all statements are relative - except this one'. And at the same time he avoided an absolutist's typically bald assertions. Both are false in many ways. In the relativist's paradox there is nothing absolute about 'all' - it is not a synonym of absolute. The statement is not even a relativist paradox, but an absolutist's disinformation. There is nothing wrong with vehemence in making the case that 'all statements are relative'. This is not paradoxical in anyway. It can be relative too. So Kant avoided nothing there. But saying the alternative is better implies bald or non-empirical assertion is better. And Kant for all his desire to rescue science, leapt right into the role of God's redeemer.

Kant may be the reason why philosophy has not progressed much in the last two hundred years, or at least why philosophy has become irrelevant while it's offspring, science grows in importance.

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