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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Father Terrence who wrote (43101)	7/2/1999 3:37:00 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Sez who? Ayn Rand? That was a facetious question, of course. But the fact is that most of us (myself included) have read very little Kant -- his work is very difficult and inconsistent (not to say boring) -- and instead rely on other people's interpretations. You are clearly talking not about the Kant of The Critique of Pure Reason, which was in part designed to rehabilitate Reason in the face of Hume's skepticism, but of The Critique of Practical* Reason, where Kant argues that the "moral law" can be known intuitively,* and proceeds to deduce the "Three Truths of Reason" -- God, Immortality, and Freedom -- from it. Nevertheless, his conception of the Moral Law and of religion, etc., is probably not one that would be recognized or shared by a true "classic mystic." Let me cite the following passage from a critical article in The Catholic Encyclopedia (no Kantians they): Kant, as is well known, reduces religion to a system of conduct. He defines religion as "the acknowledgement that our duties are God's commandments". He describes the essence of religion as consisting in morality. Christianity is a religion and is true only in so far as it conforms to this definition. The ideal Church should be an "ethical republic"; it should discard all dogmatic definitions, accept "rational faith" as its guide in all intellectual matters, and establish the kingdom of God on earth by bringing about the reign of duty. That doesn't appeal to me much. But at the same time, it sounds to me as if Kant's "rational Theism" was a forerunner of 19th century Liberal Christianity, not some sort of obscurantist doctrine that threatened to plunge European philosophy back into the Dark Ages. Besides, I would reject the proposition that we cannot ascertain truths intuitively. For example, it has often been noted that great scientists (e.g., Einstein) have often started with intuitive insights, which they then spent years "proving." The point is that most of the time intuitive insights cannot be "proved." That does not necessarily mean they may not be "true." jbe