What philosophy books are you reading?

[Avatar]

At our schools pupils can choose wether to have "religious eduction" (usually Protestant or Catholic) or something else - differing from state to state it is called "practical philosophy", "values and norms or "world-viewing education".

Now that's a damn good idea. I've long thought both that philosophy is more practical than people give it credit for, and that some basis of it should b taught in schools.

--A

[thewormoftheworld'send]

At our schools pupils can choose wether to have "religious eduction" (usually Protestant or Catholic) or something else - differing from state to state it is called "practical philosophy", "values and norms or "world-viewing education".

Now that's a damn good idea. I've long thought both that philosophy is more practical than people give it credit for, and that some basis of it should b taught in schools.

--A

Moral theory has been called 'practical philosophy' for many centuries.

[Avatar]

Ah...morality and ethics...my favourite branch of the subject.

--A

[Vader]

At my school we have a high amount of Muslim kids, a lot of the families haven't lived here longer than a few years and still are not truly integrated. This is not always easy for various reasons. This leads to the situation that the ethics classes are full of kids who didn't really choose it because they wanted to attend, but because they chose "the lesser evil", e.g avoided Religious education, which is Christian of course.

On the other hand, this is our chance. If we succeed to make them understand why certain values and ethic principles are essential for living in a society, we can avoid a lot of troubles with these kids later. It may be just two hours per week, but if done right, we can at least achieve something.

[rusmeister]

Rus,
Didn't quote the whole thing to avoid lots of scrolling for a short response.
Much of what you say makes sense, especially given your faith, apparent sincerity, and your general striving for thoughtfulness (demonstrated often in many posts on the Watch). And don't read this as an assault on you, but only exposition on me.
Here is my problem, (and what I believe may be a widespread but unexamined,denied, or hidden [for many reasons] problem for many people:
I have worse than an 'essential mistrust of reason in the final analysis.' (as you said) I have nearly certain knowledge that reason, by its very nature, at every stage, at BEST conceals, at worst blatantly and intentionally lies. And faith is even less trustworthy. In my blackest moods I wish I was capable of faith so I could forget all the rest, or purely rational so I believed truth would be found eventually by someone. I'm not. Seems bleak [and feels that way too, in those moods]. But there are upsides too, which I won't get into because it would be long, off-topic, and it's doubtful anyone cares.

Hey, Vraith,
I don't see it as an assault at all. What you describe is the essence of
Christian teaching on understanding our (fallen) selves - what we call human nature must, in the Christian mind, always be prefixed by the word "fallen" - that we were created to be in a higher state with the self turned towards God, but now the self is turned towards self. From David's "all men are liars" to "the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked", the upshot is that we are masters of self-deception.

As to faith, it is quite untrustworthy from the standpoint of reason alone (ie, using reason as a primary or sole basis of faith). However, I think, if I can again hearken back to the Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade image of him stepping out onto nothing (the leap from the 'lion's mouth', or something like that), it is very often reason vs senses and the faith, which IS reasonable, is challenged by the senses, which are often slaves to emotion.

If we wish to be rational, not now and then, but constantly, we must pray for the gift of Faith, for the power to go on believing not in the teeth of reason but in the teeth of lust and terror and jealousy and boredom and indifference that which reason, authority, or experience, or all three, have once delivered to us for truth.

C. S. Lewis, "Religion: Reality or Substitute?"
If you apply that speaking of having faith in a friend when you've come to doubt something about him, you may be able to see how that makes sense.

[rusmeister]

At my school we have a high amount of Muslim kids, a lot of the families haven't lived here longer than a few years and still are not truly integrated. This is not always easy for various reasons. This leads to the situation that the ethics classes are full of kids who didn't really choose it because they wanted to attend, but because they chose "the lesser evil", e.g avoided Religious education, which is Christian of course.

On the other hand, this is our chance. If we succeed to make them understand why certain values and ethic principles are essential for living in a society, we can avoid a lot of troubles with these kids later. It may be just two hours per week, but if done right, we can at least achieve something.

I would ask "Who is we?", and why "we" should adopt your ethical principles, having abandoned Christian ones. You are advocating an indoctrination no less biased than Christian indoctrination. (I do think children need to be indoctrinated. But that your ethics are superior to Christian ones is debatable.)

(General warning: I'm going offline for the next couple of months due to Great Lent and Pascha. I won't be responding much. Please forgive me if I have caused any offense!)

[Vader]

At my school we have a high amount of Muslim kids, a lot of the families haven't lived here longer than a few years and still are not truly integrated. This is not always easy for various reasons. This leads to the situation that the ethics classes are full of kids who didn't really choose it because they wanted to attend, but because they chose "the lesser evil", e.g avoided Religious education, which is Christian of course.

On the other hand, this is our chance. If we succeed to make them understand why certain values and ethic principles are essential for living in a society, we can avoid a lot of troubles with these kids later. It may be just two hours per week, but if done right, we can at least achieve something.

I would ask "Who is we?", and why "we" should adopt your ethical principles, having abandoned Christian ones. You are advocating an indoctrination no less biased than Christian indoctrination. (I do think children need to be indoctrinated. But that your ethics are superior to Christian ones is debatable.)

(General warning: I'm going offline for the next couple of months due to Great Lent and Pascha. I won't be responding much. Please forgive me if I have caused any offense!)

"We" just refered to the staff at my school - at least those who are teaching practical philiosophy - that would be 5 out of 100.

Who says our teachings are indoctrinations? They are offers. If you can think you might follow them.

And who says they contradict Christian values? I never did. The Ten Commanments for example are essential.

And why do you treat me as if I was the concept of an enemy?

[rusmeister]

Faith, held as compatible with reason in the context of Orthodoxy, means that reason is the handmaiden to faith. And so it really is a blind adherence to authority you're talking about, and throwing the word "reason" in there doesn't help your case. That the Orthodoxy is correct is your own assumption. But you should never assume anything, it only makes an ass out of u and me. You are really accepting your Orthodoxy as common sense, but that is only the sense common to a particular community - which leads to a phenomenon known as "group think."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_think

Kant addressed the notion of common sense, reinterpreting it in terms of the more cosmopolitan idea of a sensus communis.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensus_communis
"..we must [here] take sensus communis to mean the idea of a sense shared [by us all], i.e., a power to judge that in reflecting takes account (a priori), in our thought, of everyone else's way of presenting [something], in order as it were to compare our own judgement with human reason in general... Now we do this as follows: we compare our judgement not so much with the actual as rather with the merely possible judgements of others, and [thus] put ourselves in the position of everyone else..."

On its very face, when Kant expresses cosmopolitan ideas it very much flies against any Orthodoxy position.
For example, I find it very difficult to imagine any of your Orthodox elites putting themselves in everybody else's shoes and comparing their judgments with that of human reason in general without first consulting the sacred texts to see if that reasoning in general corresponds to their sacred word. For Kant, in both his politics and religion, the general will comes first, and so it is really a philosophy of the people and not a philosophy of God or any of His elite representatives on Earth.

I do however like C.S. Lewis, and learned quite a bit from reading his essays. I haven't read any Chesterton, but I already disagree with his quote in your sig. It should not be the proper religious stance to praise any creed, even one's own, but only to praise God.

Last comment first, misunderstanding is one of the many failures of our
thinking, and thus, why I (under Lewis's advice - See "Christian Reflections, De Futilitate" Link
) do not use the term "human reasoning" as such any more but as I said in my response to Vraith above, see a need to distinguish between Reason and human thought ("my" reasoning). I would have thought it clear, for instance, that Chesterton means "praise" in a secular sense, as we would praise anything praiseworthy, rather than in a sense of "worship". Thus, it really means "say good things".

The question here is, "Is human thought supreme?" I would maintain from start to finish that everything in Orthodoxy that is accessible to Reason is defensible by Reason. Orthodoxy differs from, say, Roman Catholicism in that it does not reduce everything to reason. (The Catholic St Thomas Aquinas pretty much does, by contrast.) In Orthodoxy we admit that some things really are beyond our understanding - the nature of the Trinity, for example. Lewis gave the closest comparison to expressing the difficulty of applying our reason to such a doctrine by using the analogy of 2-dimensional beings attempting to understand the doctrine of a cube. The limits of their reason would understand "6 sides, one essence" to be either 6 squares laid out end-to-end, destroying their unity, or superimposed 'over' each other(perhaps by drawing the same square 6 times in exactly the same place?), destroying their distinctness. So it really is an unfair simplification and unfamiliarity with Orthodoxy to simply imagining us as "scrambling for our sacred books". All you've done is to make human thought the final authority. Our use of Reason has its limitations. This is something that (here I am open to correction) I haven't seen Kant acknowledge. I think that as soon as we look at small children we can see that their reason is already in full operation, but lacking both knowledge and experience, we can see the need for them to submit to authority. We can also see that they often don't like to admit that their limitations or need for authority. What we don't see is how we ARE those children. Christ said that we must become like children if we would enter the Kingdom of heaven. You may not see any authority or wisdom in that, but there it is.

On common sense: I think one of the weaknesses of Kant's thought is the fact that a sense shared by all can be lost. We all acknowledge this on a practical level. In any event, common sense depends on having a common world view. As soon as those views diverge, the commonality of the sense ends. Thus, unbridled pluralism and diversity work to kill common sense. Also, if a society goes wrong, morally/ethically, then the common sense of that society could be repugnant to us (Nazi Germany comes readily to mind)
.
You speak of an "elite". This is where I want a head-scratching emoticon. Also, Orthodoxy is not an assumption for me. It is a conclusion. And it most certainly is NOT common sense in certain respects. Where it is not, it is better sense.

On "groupthink": It seems you don't know much of Church history if you take Orthodoxy for "group think". The nature of the battles over heresy vs orthodoxy are the very opposite of groupthink. The term is absolutely inapplicable. I recommend reading this (as a good overview of the history www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/englis ... ware_1.htm )

(General warning: I'm going offline for the next couple of months due to Great Lent and Pascha. I won't be responding much. Please forgive me if I have caused any offense!)

[thewormoftheworld'send]

Isn't Google Books grand? Except of course when they omit pages, in this case, pages 60-62 of the text you cited.

You say you'll be offline for two months, so I don't know how much effort I should put into a response.

I was astonished to read that a learned fellow such as you wrote, "Our use of Reason has its limitations. This is something that (here I am open to correction) I haven't seen Kant acknowledge." I am happy as a clam that you are open to correction on this matter, as the very HEART of Kant's thesis is that human reason has limitations. It goes to the very core of his Critique of Pure Reason, and the very reason it is called that. It was thought at one time that reason could surpass its limits, those being empirical thus uncertain, and pass into a transcendent realm pure of empirical taint where Absolute Truth may be found. Kant was determined to prove them wrong for Theoretical purposes, and yet retain the transcendent element for Practical purposes. Yet even for the Theoretical, grounds may exist for hope to thrive in. The CPR has a positive doctrine dedicated to the very concept of "hope."

So when you cited me passages on "futility" (futilitate), I wondered how it could possibly apply to my posts.

You haven't caused me any offense. Perhaps I have done so using terms such as "elite," but that is only a bit of polemics used to contrast the Kantian sensus communis with your views on Orthodoxy.

I haven't denied the history of heresy in the Church at all. We all know the Church has had its doctrinal disputes throughout its history. Each division has its own groupthink formed around a particular interpretation of the sacred texts. And the groupthink involved with Orthodoxy is nothing but a desire to spread their ideas - and the authority from which Truth springs - outward to the rest of humanity like ripples in a pond.

But what you claim about the sensus communis is obviously more applicable to the Church, exactly for the reasons you stated: divergence - and in this case, how it has manifested in the history of the Church.

Rather, what you will find in the sensus communis is a common ground for communication and reasoning which never diverges. If it did, we would no longer be one human race, but different species each very alien to the other. That is not, as you say, common sense, which varies from culture to culture. It is necessary not to lose the context of Kant's Cosmopolitanism, an idea you can readily Google search for yourself. But here is the essay I am referring to; it has certain connections with the C.S. Lewis book:
www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethi ... istory.htm

The difficulty which the mere thought of this problem puts before our eyes is this. Man is an animal which, if it lives among others of its kind, requires a master. For he certainly abuses his freedom with respect to other men, and although as, a reasonable being he wishes to have a law which limits the freedom of all, his selfish animal impulses tempt him, where possible, to exempt himself from them. He thus requires a master, who will break his will and force him to obey a will that is universally valid, under which each can be free. But whence does he get this master? Only from the human race. But then the master is himself an animal, and needs a master. Let him begin it as he will, it is not to be seen how he can procure a magistracy which can maintain public justice and which is itself just, whether it be a single person or a group of several elected persons. For each of them will always abuse his freedom if he has none above him to exercise force in accord with the laws. The highest master should be just in himself, and yet a man. This task is therefore the hardest of all; indeed, its complete solution is impossible, for from such crooked wood as man is made of, nothing perfectly straight can be built.[2] That it is the last problem to be solved follows also from this: it requires that there be a correct conception of a possible constitution, great experience gained in many paths of life, and – far beyond these-a good will ready to accept such a constitution. Three such things are very hard, and if they are ever to be found together, it will be very late and after many vain attempts.

Here you have it: an ideal to be achieved, and not a sacred text to be consulted and an interpretation agreed upon.

This ideal lies, not in humanity per se, but in a man, which is to say, the humanity within a man. There is no correct interpretation of scripture that can bring this about, it is a highly individual task. To produce through slow progress humanity from inhumanity, not reducing man's inhumanity to man, but inhumanity to himself as the final arbiter.

When you appeal to "better sense" over common sense, that is an implied appeal to authority. While I am sure there is always someone out there with better sense than myself, the problem doesn't lie with me, or the fact that I am "warped wood," but with the sense of humanity held within me. And the fact that you, Rusmeister, can recognize a better-sense, and not strictly through reason but through a sense of an almost intuitive recognition that goes beyond mere introspection or experience, indicates that there is a source within each of us which produces this better sense which we recognize as it is reflected outside of us, either through word or deed.

Some elitist somewhere produced the saying, "If you can't understand, then I can't explain it." But this is not something that needs explaining to anybody, we only need to be brought back to it again and again: not as an appeal to authority, but as an appeal to the best within each of us.

[rusmeister]

Isn't Google Books grand? Except of course when they omit pages, in this case, pages 60-62 of the text you cited.

You say you'll be offline for two months, so I don't know how much effort I should put into a response.

I was astonished to read that a learned fellow such as you wrote, "Our use of Reason has its limitations. This is something that (here I am open to correction) I haven't seen Kant acknowledge." I am happy as a clam that you are open to correction on this matter, as the very HEART of Kant's thesis is that human reason has limitations. It goes to the very core of his Critique of Pure Reason, and the very reason it is called that. It was thought at one time that reason could surpass its limits, those being empirical thus uncertain, and pass into a transcendent realm pure of empirical taint where Absolute Truth may be found. Kant was determined to prove them wrong for Theoretical purposes, and yet retain the transcendent element for Practical purposes. Yet even for the Theoretical, grounds may exist for hope to thrive in. The CPR has a positive doctrine dedicated to the very concept of "hope."

So when you cited me passages on "futility" (futilitate), I wondered how it could possibly apply to my posts.

You haven't caused me any offense. Perhaps I have done so using terms such as "elite," but that is only a bit of polemics used to contrast the Kantian sensus communis with your views on Orthodoxy.

I haven't denied the history of heresy in the Church at all. We all know the Church has had its doctrinal disputes throughout its history. Each division has its own groupthink formed around a particular interpretation of the sacred texts. And the groupthink involved with Orthodoxy is nothing but a desire to spread their ideas - and the authority from which Truth springs - outward to the rest of humanity like ripples in a pond.

But what you claim about the sensus communis is obviously more applicable to the Church, exactly for the reasons you stated: divergence - and in this case, how it has manifested in the history of the Church.

Rather, what you will find in the sensus communis is a common ground for communication and reasoning which never diverges. If it did, we would no longer be one human race, but different species each very alien to the other. That is not, as you say, common sense, which varies from culture to culture. It is necessary not to lose the context of Kant's Cosmopolitanism, an idea you can readily Google search for yourself. But here is the essay I am referring to; it has certain connections with the C.S. Lewis book:
www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethi ... istory.htm

The difficulty which the mere thought of this problem puts before our eyes is this. Man is an animal which, if it lives among others of its kind, requires a master. For he certainly abuses his freedom with respect to other men, and although as, a reasonable being he wishes to have a law which limits the freedom of all, his selfish animal impulses tempt him, where possible, to exempt himself from them. He thus requires a master, who will break his will and force him to obey a will that is universally valid, under which each can be free. But whence does he get this master? Only from the human race. But then the master is himself an animal, and needs a master. Let him begin it as he will, it is not to be seen how he can procure a magistracy which can maintain public justice and which is itself just, whether it be a single person or a group of several elected persons. For each of them will always abuse his freedom if he has none above him to exercise force in accord with the laws. The highest master should be just in himself, and yet a man. This task is therefore the hardest of all; indeed, its complete solution is impossible, for from such crooked wood as man is made of, nothing perfectly straight can be built.[2] That it is the last problem to be solved follows also from this: it requires that there be a correct conception of a possible constitution, great experience gained in many paths of life, and – far beyond these-a good will ready to accept such a constitution. Three such things are very hard, and if they are ever to be found together, it will be very late and after many vain attempts.

Here you have it: an ideal to be achieved, and not a sacred text to be consulted and an interpretation agreed upon.

This ideal lies, not in humanity per se, but in a man, which is to say, the humanity within a man. There is no correct interpretation of scripture that can bring this about, it is a highly individual task. To produce through slow progress humanity from inhumanity, not reducing man's inhumanity to man, but inhumanity to himself as the final arbiter.

When you appeal to "better sense" over common sense, that is an implied appeal to authority. While I am sure there is always someone out there with better sense than myself, the problem doesn't lie with me, or the fact that I am "warped wood," but with the sense of humanity held within me. And the fact that you, Rusmeister, can recognize a better-sense, and not strictly through reason but through a sense of an almost intuitive recognition that goes beyond mere introspection or experience, indicates that there is a source within each of us which produces this better sense which we recognize as it is reflected outside of us, either through word or deed.

Some elitist somewhere produced the saying, "If you can't understand, then I can't explain it." But this is not something that needs explaining to anybody, we only need to be brought back to it again and again: not as an appeal to authority, but as an appeal to the best within each of us.

Hi, WWE!
Yeah, I'm going offline tomorrow and don't plan to be here often.
I'm sorry if I haven't made it clear that I have not read Kant's major works. I'm going on what I have known to present and what has been presented here. (I may have also mixed up what you presented of his thesis and your view - you certainly seem to have championed Reason as ultimate authority, and maybe I am misreading that.

We may disagree less than it appears on the surface, as the Futility essay basically demonstrates the correlation of reason and the moral question. It's both an excellent defense of Reason and a denunciation of modern thought that attempts to present Reason as an enemy of faith. I encourage you to read it - you may find interesting points of agreement, as well as disagreement with Kant.

Again, just going on what you've posted, it strikes me as illogical to deny pure (transcendent) reason in theory but to claim it in practice.

Your application of "groupthink" to Orthodoxy is nonsense, as far as I am concerned, and I do not accept its application (based, if nothing else, on the definition in the link that you provide). It is decidedly pejorative and as such shows no knowledge of what Orthodoxy is about. By contrast, even though I don't know that much about Kant, I'm willing to learn, and I will only condemn the parts of his philosophy that I assert are in error as they come up. You are right, of course, that the Apostles and Christians desire to spread their good news and ripples in a pond is an acceptable analogy. But it is not the result of what 'groupthink' is described as being.

I don't say that common sense varies from culture to culture, only that individuals and cultures can lose it (it being the proper common sense which does sense Truth).

On Cosmopolitanism (the quote): 1) Orthodox Christianity teaches that man is NOT a mere animal, although he may make choices based on free will that ultimately kill his soul and leave only an animal. Man is a creation of God, a hybrid of body and spirit. Ghosts and dead bodies are the manifestations upon death (an act not intended in creation but brought about by man (Adam) himself) of those basic things.

Since Kant has already departed from the Christian view here, I'd have to contradict him on every point. The trouble is the first assumption (and that's probably true everywhere you find him reasonable and I do not). I deny that "Man is an animal". Therefore, nothing else follows. beautiful reasoning - based on a faulty premise. One thing I've learned from Lewis and Chesterton is that you have to identify the premises, the first principles, the unquestioned things the person takes for granted. I will try to read that link as soon as I can. Thank you! (I mean it! )

Continuing, Orthodoxy does agree with you that it is an ideal to be achieved. The "consulting of sacred texts", as you put it, is merely consulting the "owner's manual" on how to do that. But no, the ideal does not lie within man, so yes, we do need authority (where Kant is partly right - we DO need guidance!) to tell us the Truth about ourselves.

The better sense is indeed external. We call it "The Holy Spirit", One of the three Persons of the Trinity (ie, it is not us).

I think you are probably referring to something true when you speak of "elitists", but think the word badly applied here. One of the truths that we are taught is that we frequently, indeed, usually ignore that appeal to the best in us (by the Holy Spirit). So we do need to confront that greater part of us that hears the moral voice, aka conscience, and ignores it, chooses the selfish desire over the good of others (or even our selves), and appealing to our "better selves" doesn't work. Elitism implies some people attempting to gain control over others, or at least some kind of gnosticism, a heresy condemned by Orthodoxy.

People who don't know that they are even sick can hardly take as good news (Gospel, Evangelie) that there IS a cure. The first thing is to get the diagnosis across - something the ancients had down pretty well: that we are all fallen sinners. That we were created to be in communion with God and live forever, but somehow lost that paradise - something that exists in most world mythologies. It is by no means a Christian invention. Indeed, Christ's sayings on morality to the Jews could make no sense except to people who were already conscious of a Law already broken. The idea that man is basically good and improving (the myth of Star Trek, as I call it) is the purely modern fallacy. Lewis dealt with that in his essay, "The Funeral of a Great Myth", from the same book (Christian Reflections).

[thewormoftheworld'send]

Kant does not present reason as an enemy of faith. As for finding disagreement between Kant and the Lewis chapter, most of which I read yesterday, it is difficult because they do not always discuss the same topics, and because Lewis does not mention Kant directly.

Here is a webpage which I googled up discussing a common Kant topic in the context of Lewis's article "The Weight of Glory." www.dennyburk.com/?p=501
It is common to see a denial of Kant based on the concept of desire when in fact Kant explicitly appealed to Desire. And moreover, it is common for critics to take on Kant without apparently having read the works as is obvious with Lewis since the Kantian concept of Desire is crucial to understanding practical reason.

And so if your understanding of Kant comes through Lewis, it is now apparent why it is that every time you make a claim about Kant the exact opposite of your claim turns out to be the reality.

Of course when I turn to NewAdvent.org for information about Kant, the very same thing happens. All I have to do is follow the inverse of the teachings at that site in order to derive the facts of the matter.

Sorry you have trouble with my 'pejorative' term "groupthink." It is based on nothing more than the unwillingness of individuals within a group to go against the will of the majority. Of course there will be the heretics, but groupthink usually wins the day. But I'm glad that my 'ripples in the pond' analogy was more pleasing to you.

More striking with Orthodoxy, however, is the authoritarianism prevalent with it. This goes against my very nature, I don't need Kant to defend me from it, I was already born that way. I am an innate heretic.

I looked up "Orthodoxy" on the Princeton site just to make sure, and came up with "a belief or orientation agreeing with conventional standards." But who defines conventional standards or wisdom? The sacred texts. And on what grounds? On a human interpretation of their meaning. And who gets to decide this? The Church, which primarily consists of a group of priests. What happens to those who disagree with the will of the group? They are cast out and declared heretics. Since almost nobody wants to be punished this way, what is the result? Groupthink.

I stated that common sense varies from culture to culture in order to contrast it with a more cosmopolitan "universal sense" common to all humankind.

However, you define common sense as that which senses Truth, so I don't see how we're even on the same playing-field here. I don't think you'll find a general definition of 'common-sense' that states anything about sensing Truth.

I don't see where you think Kant assumed that "man is an animal," or to say it better, "only an animal." In this it is important to consider Kant's upbringing as a strict Lutheran Pietist and how this affected his later philosophy.

We diverge sharply on the Orthodox point you make about the will killing the soul, leaving only the animal. For Kant, the will is always good, at least in intention if not objectively. I don't know what it means to kill the soul, but the will itself can be deadened by previous choices which eventually render all power of choice more difficult. We choose our habits, and thereafter, habit chooses us until there is a "change of heart" or a "revelation" experience. And both these latter ideas are contained in Kant's work on religion.

Kant is more concerned with furthering the will's ability to make good choices than with notions governing the soul which are cast into the noumenal realm. And I think this boils down to criticizing religion's view on heaven and hell, although he doesn't explicitly state it - for one reason, Kant was not fond of the idea of being thrown in prison for his beliefs, and in that day and age it was a real possibility. Kant did not believe that the threat of punishments was good for developing a good will. He would not think that developing a good will was justifiable through such ideas as soul-death. He did not think that people could be scared into doing the good. And indeed, a human robot-like figure who always does the good automatically is not good at all. The good is not even the result of being born with a propensity toward doing good, as with a human born with a philanthropic nature. He may do good works, but they are not the result of a good will but only an inclination to doing good.

The good will manifests itself in a resistance to doing evil. So the Fall from Grace is an integral element of his moral theory. Man, in order to do good, must be able to contrast it with the fact that he is 'warped wood' with a propensity, not toward the good, but toward evil. It is only good, therefore, when contrasted with evil or with inclination in general which is not a product of the good will. The good will is strengthened against this inherent or innate propensity toward evil through making good moral choices, that is, choices in line with the categorical imperative.

The categorical imperative is not Kant's variation on a sacred text, as many have claimed; it is however his own distillation of what he sees as the moral tendencies in people, so it is based in reason and anthropological observation and not on sacred texts. Thus Kant stated that he did not bring a new set of morals at all, only a new formula for deciding what is to be moral.

This formula, of course, is based on reason and not faith.

However, if you were to say that Kant held reason as supreme, I would have to know what you mean by that. Kant was not decided concerning this or that faculty's supremacy or magistry, only on how it affects the whole. So there is also ample room for faith in his philosophy, and he is infamously known for saying that reason must at need be denied in order to make room for faith. Faith provides an opening for the good will to grow into, otherwise it would be stifled by many empirical ponderings such as were mentioned by Lewis in that book you cited. There would be no hope without faith, hope is essential to understanding Kant's moral views. But so often people, perhaps such as yourself, confuse all 'reasoning' with 'empirical reasoning'. And so you are led to Lewis's critique of empirical reasoning as deadening hope and furthering the idea that existence is futile. But that is not Kantian reasoning which explicitly makes room for the concepts of hope and faith.

Continuing on with your post, I do not equate authority with guidance if authority is seen as authoritarianism which stifles the will of the adherent. Doing good works under blind allegiance to an authority's will is not proper to morality. Guidance is a separate issue altogether. Some would proclaim that Kant is obviously writing as a kind of authority on moral issues. However, when he states that someone could come up with a moral basis other than his notion of the good will, when he says that this basis is only provisionally postulated, and that another basis may be possible, one could hardly deem that authoritarian or dogmatic. It would be like the Church claiming that the doctrine of Propitiation is only provisionally valid until someone happens to come up with another doctrine. It just doesn't happen. And so it is on this basis that I separate dogmatic faith from Kant's rational faith, and this is where Kant and the Church part ways forever.

For Kant, it could be said that reason reigns supreme in general only in the sense that reason is fallible. Fallibility makes dogmatism impossible, and faith is dogmatically inclined toward the infallible. For all your faith in the sacred texts as infallible, even granting you their infallibility, they are yet based on a human interpretation of their meaning. Thus the meaning of the sacred texts is prone to fallibility even if not the texts themselves. So you can have faith in them all you will, but the basis for your religious existence is not the texts themselves but a human interpretation of their meaning for you. Whether or not this interpretation is humane - contrasting with the inhuman extremist Muslim interpretations of the Koran - depends not on the texts themselves, whatever their true meaning is, but on how well your reason is informed by the will which is good and by the CI. And so the good will, in the moral context, reigns supreme over reason. The final end of the good will Kant termed the Holy Will which is complete individual moral perfection, or to put it in more Kantian terms, the complete satisfaction of reason in all its practical, moral ends.

It is only because King Frederick of Prussia eventually died in 1786 that Kant was able to write this at all without being imprisoned for it. That tells me a lot about faith-bound hope. The Church, Catholic or Protestant, has a bad rep for basing punishments on a lack of proper obedience to Earthly religious authority. It is only because we in this country live under a rational Constitution that the Church's capacity for such evils has been stymied. And it is only because of Enlightenment thinkers such as Kant that such freedom from the strict bounds of elite religious authority is possible at all.

Yet I think you're taking my term "elitism" too far. It is intended only in the sense that some group has a monopoly on religious truth that you can't possibly understand (faith over reason), therefore your only hope is through blind allegiance to the doctrine. Or let's say, their reason is better informed by God or holy wisdom, and so your only hope is through blind, irrational sheep-like faith. This elitist attitude was more obvious before Luther nailed his 95 Theses on the church door and started the Protestant Reformation, at a time when nobody outside the priesthood was allowed to own Bibles. This is pretty much the same attitude in the Church today, where anybody can own a Bible but nobody in the congregation is taught the meaning of its Word or encouraged to read it on their own. Truth, instead, is to be found through adherence to sacred rituals. And so in this way, people are controlled through inculcating ignorance as a sort of "original intellectual sin," and by being taught that relying on their own rationality is futile.

As for your last paragraph, Kant is famous for stating that man is "warped wood" and that he has an innate propensity for evil. He completely agrees with Church doctrine on this. However, the way out for Kant is not through the propitiation of a heavenly savior but through the establishment of a rational constitution here on Earth. So while his goals are informed, in a way, by ideals not of this Earth such as the Holy Will, the goals themselves never find their way beyond it.

[rusmeister]

Like I said, I will come back to this later. For now I'll say that I can see that I have things to learn about Kant and you have misunderstandings about the nature of Orthodoxy (and the fact that you seem to see the primary division as Catholic or Protestant is a clue to that). Hopefully you are as open to learning about it as I am to Kant.

[thewormoftheworld'send]

No, I see the primary division within the Church itself as Greek and Roman.

[Avatar]

For Kant, the will is always good, at least in intention if not objectively.

"It is by will alone that I set my mind in motion."

--A

[thewormoftheworld'send]

For Kant, the will is always good, at least in intention if not objectively.

"It is by will alone that I set my mind in motion."

--A

Frank Herbert?

[Vraith]

For Kant, the will is always good, at least in intention if not objectively.

"It is by will alone that I set my mind in motion."

--A

Frank Herbert?

Think so...pretty sure it's a mentat thing if memory serves.

[Avatar]

Well, yes and no...it actually appears in none of the Dune books that I know. But it did appear in Lynch's Dune movie as the "Mentat Prayer"...pretty sure it was inserted by Lynch himself. I like it though.

--A

[Vraith]

yea, I was picturing that guy in my head when I responded. It was pretty spooky delivery. It certainly fits the style of the books [seems like a nifty parallel to the 'litany against fear.'

[Avatar]

Indeed, and the "first law of mentat" (You cannot understand a process by stopping it...) which does appear in the books.

--A

[[Syl]]