Immanuel Kant

[jswranch]

I discussed philosophy with semi-Catholic philosophy prof at my church. His words challenged me to learn and perhaps one day teach philosophy (I currently have no formal education in the field). He told me how Thomas was great for his time, but philosophy has outgrown Aquinas and the church needs the next great Philosopher saint. He spoke how some of Kant's challenges were answered by Richard McBrien, but more is needed. Essentially, Aquinas used the Socratic method to prove the CC. However, the new Aquinas is needed using the Kant method.


Comments:

Did Kant bring the CC new challenges needing a new and improved philosophy above Aquinas ?

What did Kant bring (in a smaller nutshell than wikipedia)?

Did Kant propose our minds cannot define dogmas of the unknown?

Is Kant the father of relativism?

Does McBrien offer anything usefull in defending the chruch?

Is Kant's vision not a western philosophy

What does Neo-Kant teach?

If I wanted to try and defeat Kant's challenges to the CC, how long would I have to be in school?

Am I correct in describing Transcendental Realism as knowing what you dont know, which is what made Socrates famous?

From Wikipedia... "[Kant] demonstrated this with a thought experiment, showing that we cannot meaningfully conceive of an object that exists outside of time and has no spatial components and isn't structured in accordance with the categories of the understanding, such as substance and causality." If the above is true, then Stephen Hawkings cannot formulate blackholes?

I like Kant's questions of 'What do we know and how do we know it?" Has the church answered him?

[Guest JeffCR07]

[quote]Did Kant bring the CC new challenges needing a new and improved philosophy above Aquinas ? [/quote]

A post-Kantian philosophy is necessary if one believes that the skepticism of Hume would have reasonable ground without Kant's synthetic a priori

translation: if you reject Hume's premises, you don't need Kant.

[quote]What did Kant bring (in a smaller nutshell than wikipedia)?[/quote]

Kant saved science from Hume. He also critiqued Reason in such a way as to draw limits to what can and cannot be intuited by the human intellect.

[quote]Did Kant propose our minds cannot define dogmas of the unknown?[/quote]

Not exactly. What you are probably talking about is that Kant argued that we can have no philosophical or scientific knowledge of the noumena, that is, "things-in-themselves." With regards to dogma, however, Kant felt that his delimitation of Reason made justifiable room for Faith (cf. Kantian Antinomes)

[quote]Is Kant the father of relativism?[/quote]

Don't flatter him, relativism has been around forever, and if you really want to slap a "philosophical father figure" onto it, I would say it was Protagoras, who was born in 481 BC.

[quote]Does McBrien offer anything usefull in defending the church?[/quote]

Yes, but you can always, always find someone who is better at defending the Church than he is.

[quote]Is Kant's vision not a western philosophy[/quote]

Kantian philosophy is most certainly a western philosophy. He was a German, and his thought has dominated the philosophical landscape ever since his time. Moreover, I am unaware of any major Kantian movements or trends in the Orient.

[quote]What does Neo-Kant teach?[/quote]

There is no such person. The Neo-Kantian movement was a revival of philosophy in germany and elsewhere that focused on the work and thought of Kant. It led to lots of commentaries.

[quote]If I wanted to try and defeat Kant's challenges to the CC, how long would I have to be in school?[/quote]

Depends on how thoroughly you want to beat him. Like I said above, if you reject Humean premises then you really have no need of the Kantian critique. If you want to give Kant a whooping in the style that St. Thomas gave Siger of Brabant, then you'll certainly need a PhD along with the brain the size of a small planet.

[quote]Am I correct in describing Transcendental Realism as knowing what you dont know, which is what made Socrates famous?[/quote]

No, anyone who tells you that they can sum up transcendental Realism quickly is a liar. Anyone who tells you they can do it with a pithy one-liner is a commedian.

[quote]From Wikipedia... "[Kant] demonstrated this with a thought experiment, showing that we cannot meaningfully conceive of an object that exists outside of time and has no spatial components and isn't structured in accordance with the categories of the understanding, such as substance and causality." If the above is true, then Stephen Hawkings cannot formulate blackholes?[/quote]

The Wikipedia quote, while correct, is more convoluted than it needs to be. Kant is simply saying that we always think according to space, time, and the categories. While Aristotle locates these things in the world, Kant locates them in the mind. His "thought experiment" ultimately reduces to the rather blatant statement that we cannot think of what we cannot think.

Oh, and no, black holes can most certainly be formulated, as they are singularities. If a point (necessary for any notion of space) can be cognized, so can a black hole.

[quote]I like Kant's questions of 'What do we know and how do we know it?" Has the church answered him?[/quote]

Every philosopher since the beginning of philosophy has been asking those questions. They are not unique to Kant, and all you need to do is pick up any book by any Catholic philosopher and you will have one example of how the Church has answered those questions (which are not his questions).

Your Brother In Christ,

Jeff

[phatcatholic]

what is the Kantian critique of Catholicism?

[Justified Saint]

Don't know that there is such a critique, but clearly some of Kant's thinking is done at the detriment of Catholicism. Kant was very critical of some forms of institutional religion and his whole idea of the categorical imperative substitutes reason in the place of God.

[jswranch]

[quote name='phatcatholic' post='1010181' date='Jun 21 2006, 09:16 PM']
what is the Kantian critique of Catholicism?
[/quote]
Not an expert opinion, but Kant says our minds cannot definitivly know of God. Someone correct me.

[Guest JeffCR07]

Kant does not have a critique of Catholicism per se, but, as Justified Saint has pointed out, much of Kantian Philosophy is at odds with Catholic teaching. Jswranch, to answer your question, Kant would argue that, while it must be possible to postulate God, it is impossible to have any scientific or philosophical knowledge of him at all, let alone definitive knowledge. Many (myself included) see this position as manifestly contradictory.

Your Brother In Christ,

Jeff

[Laudate_Dominum]

Straight up Thomism slays Kantianism. IMHO.

There are plenty of modern Catholic intellectuals who have quite thoroughly engaged Kant's philosophy. You might be interested in the movement within 20th century Catholic thought known as Trancendental Thomism. Marechal sort of kicked it off. I suppose that Lonergan is my favourite of this camp. This is pretty cool: [url="http://www.lonergan.org/seminarnotes/Insight/insight.htm"]http://www.lonergan.org/seminarnotes/Insight/insight.htm[/url]

If you're interested in pithy but profound criticisms of Kantianism I think Von Hildebrand and Fr. Norris Clarke do a good job of sort of getting at the heart of the matter.

[fearundercontrol]

Here are my notes on Kant from the ethics/philosophy class I took last semester:


○ Emmanuel Kant--what matters is the intention

* Categorical Imperative: act in such a way that you could consistently will the maxim presupposed by your action to be a moral law.
□ 1. Isolate your action.
□ 2. Create the maxim.
□ 3. Universalize

*Means-end Principle: treat all persons as ends and not as mere means (aka. don't use people/don't use ppl as a tool to get things)
¨ Kant believed this also meant to respect the decisions of a competent person

~ If action passes both principles, it is right. If it fails either, it is wrong.

Edited July 22, 2006 by fearundercontrol

[Fides_et_Ratio]

Amen to L_D.... jswranch-- look up Fr. Norris Clarke and read some of his works. He's an updated version of Aquinas--a GREAT Thomistic scholar ([u]The One and the Many[/u] & [u]Person and Being[/u] are my Clarke favorites)

The only thing, in my estimation, that Kant is useful for are ethical debates with atheists/agnostics.

[Justified Saint]

The Holy Father finds some more use in Kant, I think. He even suggests returning to Kant's notion of God, the immortality of the soul, and freedom as a form of practical knowledge.

[TheOliverOrder88]

You know I have absolutely no knowledge in all of this.

Yet, I do agree with your philosopher prof that we need some very learned saint.

I was thinking the other day, where is the modern day St. Augustine?

[jswranch]

[quote name='TheOliverOrder88' post='1033763' date='Jul 29 2006, 03:06 PM']
You know I have absolutely no knowledge in all of this.

Yet, I do agree with your philosopher prof that we need some very learned saint.

I was thinking the other day, where is the modern day St. Augustine?
[/quote]
Some may argue he is currently occupying the seat of Rome.

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='Justified Saint' post='1029638' date='Jul 23 2006, 05:52 PM']
The Holy Father finds some more use in Kant, I think. He even suggests returning to Kant's notion of God, the immortality of the soul, and freedom as a form of practical knowledge.
[/quote]
that sounds a bit unbelievable to me. Although the Pope is German, perhaps even Prussian for all I know.

I do believe that JP2 got a great deal of inspiration from Kant. One kind find such things as the personalistic norm in Kant (a key concept in Love and Responsibility); but Kant has many major problems and this idea of "returning to Kant's notion of God" seems a bit outlandish to me. Could you clarify what you're getting at with this?

[qfnol31]

You can't answer Kant following in the Kantian approach to Catholicism without denying tons of truths first...

[Justified Saint]

[quote name='Laudate_Dominum' post='1034309' date='Jul 30 2006, 09:42 AM']
that sounds a bit unbelievable to me. Although the Pope is German, perhaps even Prussian for all I know.

I do believe that JP2 got a great deal of inspiration from Kant. One kind find such things as the personalistic norm in Kant (a key concept in Love and Responsibility); but Kant has many major problems and this idea of "returning to Kant's notion of God" seems a bit outlandish to me. Could you clarify what you're getting at with this?
[/quote]

[url="http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/index.php?showtopic=55476"]http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/index.php?showtopic=55476[/url]

[SJP]

I have some questions about this topic that I'll have to get to later, in particular, questions about Lonergan.

I'll just bump for now and come back later.

[LuchaporElRey21]

I don't know if someone has already answered this or not, but here is a shot:

Kant would not agree with humans acting from anything other than determining the moral law through the use of Reason. In this way, man is 'autonomous' or 'self-law'. In Kantian ethics, this is the equivalency of freedom.

Here is where Kant disagrees with us: if man acts from anything other than his own reasoning of the moral law, he acts heteronomously, or "in slavery". The outside forces that might cause him to do so would be: commandments of God, civil authorities, parents, etc.



And I don't think Kant was a relativist either. It seems like he was an absolutist, believing in absolute moral maxims, such as "Do not lie."

[SJP]

With respect to Lonergan,

As Jeff stated earlier:

"A post-Kantian philosophy is necessary if one believes that the skepticism of Hume would have reasonable ground without Kant's synthetic a priori
translation: if you reject Hume's premises, you don't need Kant."


It seems to me that Aristotle and Aquinas had already demonstrated how Hume's skepticism was faulty.

From Peter Keeft's "Summa of the Summa"

"Aristotle held that the intellect has an operation which is independent of the body's cooperation. Now nothing corporeal can make an impression on the incorporeal. And therefore in order to cause the intellectual operation, according to Aristotle, the impression caused by the sensible does not suffice, but something more noble is required, for the agent is more noble than the patient, as he says (ibid. 5). Not, indeed, in the sense that the intellectual operation is effected in us by the mere impression of some superior beings, as Plato held; but that the higher and more noble agent which he calls the active intellect, of which we have spoken above (Q. 79), causes the phantasms received from the senses to be actually intelligible, by a process of abstraction.
According to this opinion, then, on the part of the phantasms, intellectual knowledge is caused by the senses. But since the phantasms cannot of themselves affect the passive intellect, and require to be made actually intelligible by the active intellect, it cannot be said that the sensible knowledge is the total and perfect cause of intellectual knowledge, but rather that it is in a way the material cause."


So if we can reject Hume, we have no need for Kant.

Does Lonergan just build on Aquinas while rejecting Kant? Or does he accept some aspects of Kant's thought? and if he does, why? For Kant follows Hume, and as noted previously, we need not accept Hume.

I think I also answered my own questions in the other thread on Aquinas.

I would appreciate it if someone could expand on why Hume's skepticism is erroneous.

[SJP]

bump

[Guest JeffCR07]

I think it is certainly true that one can build a very strong case against Humean skepticism on an Aristotelian/Thomistic base. In a very, very simplified form, the argument goes like this:

1.) I can understand this concrete object before me
2.) My understanding of this thing involves, implicitly, that I understand it as a member of a class
3.) I can form an abstract idea of a class, or universal, on the basis of this concrete
4.) A universal does not exist as an empirical datum
5.) Hume states that there only exist "matters of fact" and "relations of ideas"
6.) Hume understands "matters of fact" to pertain only to empirical data
7.) Therefore, a universal must exist within the realm of "relations of ideas"

Thus, we find that there [i]is[/i] a link between relations of ideas and matters of fact. Hume's criticism of causality is dependent upon a radical seperation between these two realms, and, as such, his critique fails when it is shown (as above) that there is a link between the two.

I am not familiar enough with lonergan to comment on his system.

Your Brother In Christ,

Jeff