United States or Seychelles ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But in less than two decades after this time, Kant's philosophic successors, Fichte and Hegel, elaborated the idea that the chief function of the state is educational; that in particular the regeneration of Germany is to be accomplished by an education carried on in the interests of the state, and that the private individual is of necessity an egoistic, irrational being, enslaved to his appetites and to circumstances unless he submits voluntarily to the educative discipline of state institutions and laws.
Kant's "Critique," op. cit. p. 16. By your permission I lay before you, in a series of letters, the results of my researches upon beauty and art. I am keenly sensible of the importance as well as of the charm and dignity of this undertaking. I shall treat a subject which is closely connected with the better portion of our happiness and not far removed from the moral nobility of human nature.
On this principle I make no apology to the reader for detaining him upon a short sketch of Kant's life and domestic habits, drawn from the authentic records of his friends and pupils.
The more natural a method of acquisition, the less likely is it to be social. The essence of morality is the subjugation of nature in obedience to social needs. To use Kant's admirable description, concert pathologically extorted by the mere necessities of situation, is exalted into a moral union.
As Kant vainly wrote to Swedenborg and others as he vainly spent 7£. on 'Arcana Coelestia, so Sir Walter was anxious to go to Egypt to examine the facts of ink-gazing clairvoyance. Kant confesses that each individual ghost-story found him sceptical, whereas the cumulative mass made a considerable impression. Kant's irony is peculiarly Scottish.
Kant's lifelong researches revolve around four propositions: 1. Who am I? 2. What am I? 3. What can I do? 4. What can I know? The answer to Number Four is that I can not know anything. That is to say, the wise man is the man who knows that he does not know. And this disposes of Number One and Number Two, leaving only Number Three for our consideration.
The very absurdities of philosophy are the most potent arguments in substantiating the claims of Christianity. Kant's theory that we can know nothing beyond ourselves gave the deathblow to philosophy. Mysticism contends that reason only darkens the mind, and consequently, discarding all reasoning processes, relies upon immediate revelation.
H. Vaihinger's Kommentar zu Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft, vol. i., 1881, pp. 48-49. This is a work marked by acuteness, great industry, and an objective point of view which merits respect. It would be a most interesting task to trace in the writings which belong to Kant's pre-critical period the growth and development of the fundamental critical positions.
Among Baxter's philosophical merits, we ought not to overlook, that the substitution of Trichotomy for the old and still general plan of Dichotomy in the method and disposition of Logic, which forms so prominent and substantial an excellence in Kant's Critique of the Pure Reason, of the Judgment, and the rest of his works, belongs originally to Richard Baxter, a century before Kant; and this not as a hint, but as a fully evolved and systematically applied principle.
Hence it was, that in the latter period of his life, though less perhaps from actual hunger than from some uneasy sensation of habit or periodical irritation of stomach, he could hardly wait with patience for the arrival of the last person invited. There was no friend of Kant's but considered the day on which he was to dine with him as a day of pleasure.
Word Of The Day