A discussion question, after a series of linked-to posts on Immanuel Kant:
On women — e.g., “woman betrays her secrets even though she is unable to keep those of others (owing to her love of gossip). Man is fond of domestic peace and submits easily to its governance so as to be unmolested in his business. Woman has no dislike for domestic war for which she is armed with her tongue …”
On Jews — e.g., the Jews are “sharp dealers” who are “bound together by superstition.” Their “immoral and vile” behavior in commerce shows that they “do not aspire to civic virtue,” for “the spirit of usury holds sway amongst them.” They are “a nation of swindlers” who benefit only “from deceiving their host’s culture.”
On war (and more fully here) — e.g., “At the stage of culture at which the human race still stands, war is an indispensable means for bringing it to a still higher stage.”
On race — e.g., “The mingling of stocks (due to great conquests), little by little erodes the character and it is not good for the human race.”
On education (and here) — e.g., “Above all things, obedience is an essential feature in the character of a child, especially of a school boy or girl.”
On reason (and more fully here [pdf]; HTML excerpt here) — e.g., “I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith.”
The question is:
Should Kant really be categorized as an Enlightenment liberal, as many standard historical accounts do?
Thoughts?
Your tags gave your answer away. Immanuel Kant can’t be an Enlightenment liberal. He is either anti-Enlightenment or counter-Enlightenment. The question then is, why do so many standard historical accounts misclassify him and in the process confuse students of history and philosophy?
I’ve said this a thousand times before, but: in their essence, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and Hegel were the four worst ILliberals. They’re more responsible for the current world irrationality, depravity, and unhappiness than anyone. And Kant is #1.
This man was not an enlightenment liberal. From the works I read, I find many people have a limited view of Kant’s true intellectual thought. This man is as anti reason as they come. I just don’t understand how people misconstrue his work. Are they glossing over his ideas? Or like with the religious, are they just picking and choosing what they deem important, and ignore the rest of work? I’m just baffled by this.
The second formulation of Kant’s categorical imperative – “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means” – strongly evokes a cornerstone of liberal political theory. But on looking at it closer it becomes clear that what Kant meant by “humanity” was the capacity to generate categorical imperatives – a very different, indeed inverted meaning from what it evokes for most.
It is evident that what mattered to Kant was not the content of categorical imperatives but their form i.e. the way they were to be held: how they were to be formulated, observed and practiced: based on unverifiable postulates, practiced with unconditional obedience and self renunciation and allowing of no exceptions – including “philanthropic concerns”. In ‘The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals’, after discussion of other lesser motivations he says of his highest principle of morality.
“Finally, there is an imperative which commands a certain conduct immediately, without having as its condition any other purpose to be attained by it. This imperative is categorical. It concerns not the matter of the action, or its intended result, but its form and the principle of which it is itself a result; and what is essentially good in it consists in the mental disposition, let the consequence be what it may.”
Such selfless, faith-based, unconditional obedience and practice were, in Kant’s view, sublime: The highest expression of freedom, dignity and autonomy – untainted by nature, reason, self, interests, values, emotions, goals or, as French philosopher Benjamin Constant prodded him to acknowledge, “philanthropic concerns.” In mine they fall with the tendency spotlighted by Miller who observed that the primary virtue inculcated by the brutal traditional European, particularly German childrearing methods of the time was unconditional obedience to authority.
Indeed one of the “poisonous pedagogues” Miller quotes at length is Johann Georg Sulzer with whom Kant corresponded on the subject of moral education and whom he mentions favorably in a footnote of ‘The Groundwork’. In his 1748 ‘An Essay on the Education and Instruction of Children’ (addressed by Professor Hicks on this site) Sulzer declared that, “Obedience is so important that all education is actually nothing other than learning how to obey.” And on critical thinking, knowledge, conscience, choice and responsibility…? In the same work Sulzer insists on the need for physical compulsion as early as age two to enforce such obedience, advising: “It is quite natural for the child’s soul to want to have a will of its own … If their wills can be broken at this time, they will never remember afterwards that they had a will”.
In my view the categorical imperative was a reformulation in more acceptably secular terms of the highest law of Christian moral action, the supreme imperative embodied in the crusader cry, “Deus vult!” – “God wills it!” Like the categorical imperative, “God Wills it” was for the Christian believer the prime, transcendent principle of moral action: Based on faith and ideally practiced with unconditional obedience and self-renunciation unchecked by nature, reason, interests, emotions, needs, values, circumstances and “philanthropic concerns.”
If Kant fashioned the form of the imperative it was Hegel who supplied the content. Kant removed reason from the moral equation; Hegel supplied the object of faith. Kant had hollowed out what remained of the moral self; Hegel filled the empty mold with reverential state worship. Kantian-Hegelian man was now an instrument ready to be used by the divine state guided by its militant world historical hero in service to the unfolding destiny of his Volk – or, in the Marxian adaption: Class.
Then throw into the mix the brutal “poisonous pedagogy” spotlighted by Miller, Montessori, and others. Philosophically, psychologically and physically the war of annihilation against the self had been relentless. The drive to purpose and self-justification was channeled onto the almighty state; the denied rage at the violation and betrayal of the self was channeled onto “others” it specified: Jews, the bourgeoisie, kulaks and other “people’s enemies.”
Much controversy exists over the meanings and arguments of Kant’s moral theory, and as with most key aspects of his thought, different thinkers and schools offer competing interpretations. Kantian Ermanno Bencivenga notes that “…what Kantian ethics is is a controversial matter…” As with those expounding rival Bible-based doctrines each has their scriptures to quote. Even for many mainstream philosophers the pressing question of why categorical imperatives merited such absolute, unconditional authority, hence obedience, has been left unanswered – perhaps unsurprisingly in light of the fact that Kant did not consider morality within the proper domain of reason, in spite of his heavy ladling out of the word. In a long, scholarly and otherwise nonpartisan exposition of his moral theory American philosopher Garth Kemerling is moved to write that Kant’s arguments for the ultimate grounds of the categorical imperative are “viciously circular.” In the Groundwork Kant writes
“In fact, the sublimity and intrinsic dignity of the command in duty are so much the more evident, the less the subjective impulses favor it and the more they oppose it, without being able in the slightest degree to weaken the obligation of the law or to diminish its validity … notwithstanding that it has nothing to support it in heaven or earth…”
I call it the Loki morality, after the Norse god of trickery and mischief.
Good quotations to reference, Ed.
I wonder — playfully — if Mr. Fox has not been infected with Kant’s own cant and rambling discourse. Is the term Enlightenment Philosopher not almost purely historical? In reading him, people seem to forget he was a Prussian, and at the time, strict discipline with children, for example, was universal — or else your kid would be killed by the neighbor in some manner. Kant did not exclude tenderness — would you rather he instruct your child or Rousseau? Our modern eyes occlude history with self-righteous gooey teardrops.
I think Prof Hicks is baiting the hook (mischievously?) with the recall of contentious issues, like female equality, war, and Jewry. If we see Kant as a passing figure in philosophy (according to Mrs. O’Connor, there is only one philosopher really : Aristotle) and make some allowance for his background, and admit his impossibly dense and obtuse prose style, he made some good points and did not destroy human reason, he pointed out some of its perceptual shortcomings, as in a priori concerns. However, no one should waste time reading Kant in detail, as one historian [name still unrecollectible] claimed it would “drive you insane.” I think Kant intended to convey that reason can be ponderous. As to his villainy as a thinker, pass the blame onto Hegel, who matured the political poisonous berries.
Criticize the Jews? OMG! Kant lived in Prussia, next to Poland, where, after several generations, 10% of the population owned 90% of the wealth — they couldn’t possibly be “sharp dealers,” now could they? Take a look at Russia, and the ethnicity of most Communist officials. The Jews were given their first chance at liberation in Germany which is where Conservative Judaism was born. Germany was almost Heaven to them, and some of Hitler’s original supporters were Jews who gave him money to prevent the immigration of their Eastern cousins. The Rothschilds weren’t usurers? They didn’t finance wars? The very sticky Judenfrage catches many flies in its ointment, many buzzing hypocrites. At the time, the Jews were still adjudged to be Christ’s kinsmen. The German writer Lessing gives them humane consideration in Nathan the Wise. But it is hardly anti-Semitic to note that wherever the Jews go, they are often kicked out (England, France, Spain, Germany) and are never trusted. When asked about the severity of the Jewish policy, Hermann Goering said, “They are like Germans, only a little smarter.” How much of their suffering was brought upon themselves no one can say. Kant’s remarks are very standard European views. But they sound more like “caveat emptor” to me.
In this vein, the hypocrite has many shiny badges to wears : I’M ANTI SLAVERY! I’M ANTI FASCIST! I’M ANTI RACIST! I’M ANTI HOMOPHOBE! [space prevents a complete catalog] The German mind is still very exact and exacting. They usually spread directly to a subject (yet, avoid some politically incorrect takes). In America, we are tithed by the media to endorse political views, even if we don’t hold them: if you criticize the Jews or Israel, you are an “anti-Semite”; if you don’t like affirmative action programs, you are “racist”; if homosexuality disgusts you, you are “homophobic”, and the like. (Most of “political correctness” comes from TV network policies evolved in NYC, that fountainhead of pornographic enterprise) PC is one of the most insidious attacks on free speech, turning matters of bad taste into moral breaches.
Let us consider Kant dispassionately. He is another thinker, in another land…and…he is dead.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on Kant (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/) opens with the rather uncomplicated declaration: “Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) is the central figure in modern philosophy.”
While there is far from uniform consensus on the matter, many commentators have attributed the seminal role of Hegel in modern totalitarianism. In his writings his reverence for the authoritarian state under the helm of its divinely guided, militant “world historical” leader and the suborning of the rights of the individual to their role in the unfolding of a people’s destiny are starkly clear – among the few things in his writings that are.
But the role of Kant is rarely imputed and only a very few will argue that there is a necessary link between his ideas and modern totalitarianism. “Never has a system of thought so dominated an epoch” wrote Will Durant in ‘The Story of Philosophy’, “as the philosophy of Immanuel Kant dominated the thought of the nineteenth century.” “To account for the influence of Kant,” said Ernst Cassirer “is to write a history of modern philosophy.” While universally acknowledged as the central Western philosopher of modern times, that these times produced two world wars, the Holocaust and a rapid succession of totalitarian regimes of unprecedented apocalyptic fury is a fact seldom associated with him.
But if it holds that philosophy is the most foundational, hence powerful of social forces, and in light of the universal consensus that Kant is the modern West’s central philosophic figure, I think it is fair to ask: Could there be a connection?
Though he is dead, Kant’s ideas are very much alive and permeate every facet of our culture. The premises and issues he articulated lie at the roots of virtually every Western philosophical and ideological movement of our time – from idealism to collectivism to phenomenology to socialism to existentialism to Marxism to analytic philosophy to Keynesianism to postmodernism.
Mr. Dahl: I think it is important to separate the Jewish race and Jewish culture. Like all religion based cultures the Judaic contains hideous pathologies. Probably the greatest historical millstone around the necks of Jews has been their unrivaled tribalism and obsession with genealogy.
While Zionism assimilated elements of it, in my view a far healthier and empowering tradition was the Haskalah or Jewish Enlightenment, prodded by the European, one I think bears revisiting by Jewish scholars. Among other aspects Haskalah intellectuals questioned their culture’s focus on ethnicity and lineage in favor of a cosmopolitan worldview. But this movement was undermined by the 18th–19th century German-centered reaction to the Enlightenment that undermined the universality of individual rights in the European mind in favor of collectivism left and right, including the racist nationalist völkisch movements the Nazis proved the most zealous exponents of. Zionism emerged as a defensive reaction, unfortunately if understandably adopting many of its most unsavory tenets.
Yes: far too many Jews promote the idea that to criticize Judaism, Jewish culture or Israel is to be anti-Semitic, and in America for a politician to do so is to commit political suicide. I see this to no one’s interests, above all, Jews themselves.
Whereas I admire the meandering niceties of Mr. Fox’s thought, my somewhat turgid essay was in reply to Kant’s being an Enlightenment Liberal Philosopher, and I tried to point out that he must be seen as a Prussian thinker, and that his remarks on “Jews” [inaccurate nickname for a scattered Semitic family] were standard fare. The JUDENFRAGE, or “the Jewish question” had long stimulated European thinkers and aristocrats. Consternation over them arose because they are 1. God’s chosen name people, and blood relatives to Jesus. 2. Their reputation has been “sharp dealing” because of their moneylending, and their abuse of whatever freedoms were granted them. Initially, medieval myths about “the Jews” [I use this term for lack of a better] were founded on their foreign appearance and behavior and on their alleged role in killing Jesus, as the Scripture states, “His blood be upon us, and on our children, and on our children’s children.” THIS IS A HIGHLY RELIGIOUS ISSUE. Other stories came out that they would kidnap and murder Christian children [e.g. The Prioress’s Tale by Chaucer] and that they drank Christian blood literally, and indirectly, through usury. Grimm’s [politically incorrect] tome tells of a Jew who cheats a man, who dies from the fraud, and the Jew is hanged. Lots of hate literature of that kind. But then, the Talmud teaches the Jews to hate all Gentiles and cheating them is OK. In contradiction to what Moses preached. “Treat aliens in your midst better than yourselves.”
It was during Kant’s lifetime that the infamous House of Rothschild was growing fat and priming itself for the later financing of wars and, most importantly, Zionism, into which they poured millions. However, that’s small beer, until WWI, then WWII, then “the Holocaust” a term not used by Churchill or Roosevelt and which did not become current until the 1970’s. Needless to say, anyone who opposed the State of Israel in postwar decades was labelled a “Nazi”, and propaganda against Germany in particular was flooded into world consciousness by Anglo-Zionist polemics and Hollywood.
Be that as it may, in the time of Kant the Jewish moneylender and the “wandering Jew” had instilled its image into the European mind, rightly or wrongly, much as had the Gypsy clan. Still, most people believed Jesus was a Jew and that God would protect the Jews, no matter their misdeeds. In fact, in Matthew 23 Jesus disenfranchises them, predicts the downfall of Jerusalem and how to avoid extermination, and goes to his death at the hands of the Sanhedrin. The Jews choose Barrabas to survive and Jesus to die at Calvary. MORE RELIGION.
On which note, Jewish people, Jewish culture, and Jewish life depend on their special status. Otherwise, as Einstein pointed out, they are just another bunch of folks. But Mr. Fox is refuted by the fact that to be a Jew, one must be descended from Jacob [called “Israel” after he “struggled with the angel”], be circumcised, and offer tithes. It is the only religion with a racial requirement. However, some theologians assert that Jesus’ having paid the “ransom sacrifice” for man’s sins, to be an Israelite is to be “born again” and to be a “spiritual Israelite…circumcised in the heart…” But, according to JC, one can no longer come to God except through him. “I am the resurrection and the life…” etc etc!! Gotcha both ways!
As for Kant’s views on women, or races, or child rearing, seen in the Prussian ken, there’s nothing new or unusual. Aristotle, the only real philosopher, endorsed slavery and had other quirks. As a philosopher, in metaphysics, Kant is one of the most influential and prominent, but that does not guarantee his influence as Mr. Fox claims. If metaphysics study the nature of reality, and reality, as Ayn Rand states, “is what exists,” then we must see Kant in perspective, and dispassionately. “What exists” are people, animals, the earth, the universe, laws of nature, relativistic time space, quantum mechanics, and maybe string theories of little fluorescent donuts that compose reality, well, the physical universe of mass and energy at least. The philosophy of Kant, then Hegel obviously influenced totalitarian thinkers, but REALITY became more complex and Science is now the most influential tool in common use. From science we supposedly have Evolution [in fact, Democritus’ idea] and Darwin and endless aeons during which we changed from slime to sublime, microbe to man. Another hot topic! But, check above, a religious one. We might also point out that the Mideast conflict is between two monotheistic peoples, the Arabs [Allah] and the Jews [Adonai Elohim]. Religion, we can all agree, has killed more people than Ronald McDonald. Marxism is also a religion, when you get right down to it.
My opinion [not having read all of Kant] most superficial is that Kant essayed ethics and morality, and proposed that reason and the human mind was limited, and always required checks and balances. He endorsed “faith” because many religious ideas depend on it, “faith” being not blind, but the “assured expectation of things…” the proper Bible definition. One “exercises faith in Jesus” and not simple belief (often mindless and gullible) because the promises given by God through Christ are still not fully materialized. Jesus raised four people from the dead to show that God will do so, now, science tells us if we have the DNA and the person’s brain codes, we may [someday] do the same. Some scientists claimed to have recreated life (which I strongly doubt).
I don’t think Kant deserves the blame for bad politics, he does deserve censure and refinement and understanding. That Aristotle defended slavery did not put Uncle Tom in his cabin. So many causes go into one political event we may not cite an idea as its cause. However, I concede that Kant threw thinkers a nasty curve ball. So, one might say, did Wittgenstein. I am a theist, but subscribe strongly to Ayn Rand as a panacea for many bogus ideologies the worst being Marxism.
Err, doesn’t that bring us back to the “Jewish question” again?
Yee-oww!
Mr. Dahl: You say, “So many causes go into one political event we may not cite an idea as its cause.” Do all causes have the same affective power? Are not some more fundamental, hence seminal than others?
In severing the connection of man’s reasoning mind to reality and slipping it as it were into a solipsistic box (or maze), and in killing off what remained of the moral concept of the self, I think Kant laid the foundations for the totalitarian edifice Hegel raised.
…and Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, et al implemented.
“Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.”
– Albert Camus
The quote from Camus is apt. I recall being impressed with his succinct prose, which I read in French.
As for Kant, we have to see him in perspective, that of his background and how his theses would have been received by a Prussian university. German is exact, one cannot misstate a thing, but its structure is ponderous, and can become cloudy. The worst example is that of Hegel, who seems more poetic than profound. Whereas Kant expounds a vast territory of metaphysic, Hegel floods a swamp. His own thesis versus antithesis seems (to me) admissive that he can’t write clearly.
My take is that talking metaphysics is more uplifting and instructive than political philosophy, which tends to make predictions or evaluate events. I don’t think Kant intended to destroy human reason, but more or less, asked thinkers to “check their premises”, often in so complex a manner as to defy simple logic. He did claim to have solved all metaphysical issues at the end of one of his critiques. Perhaps he intended to take the superficial appeal of Berkely or Hume and use it to tweak other ratiocinative creatures. His categorical imperative in ethics is little more than the Golden Rule.
Prof Hicks does marvelous well in his history of the Enlightenment and alleges that Kant makes the breach between faith and reason. But Kant, nor any philosopher, has the last word. How many brilliant men have proven little more than mouthpieces of their times? Whom would one choose as the Enlightenment thinker most exemplary? Isn’t the Enlightenment a transition between medieval spirituality and scientific modernity? Medieval thinkers made philosophy the handmaid of theology, and during the Enlightenment, in many respects, aren’t they all playing musical chairs? Faith no more negates reason than reason negates faith — unless we assume faith always to be blind, a crutch for the ignorant. One might argue that a thinker has faith in reason, only to be cornered in a series of definitions and proofs which serve the interest of the rationalist, the political radical, the philosopher-poetaster or the smart aleck.
LaRochefaucault : “Arguments would not last so long, were the truth on one side only.”
Though all may play a role in discovery scientists make careful distinction between intuition, conjecture, hypothesis, theory and knowledge. A claim to knowledge is based on rational criteria of proof. It is not a claim to omniscience or infallibility. This is substantially different from one who proclaims, “Muh Lord Jay-sus, ah buh-leeeeeeeeeeeve!!!!”
Faith has often negated reason, e.g. Galileo and Bruno.
I disagree with the examples you give. They are almost clumsy in their imbalance. Faith is “the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld” in Scripture, its only purposeful definition. Other definitions do not include the aspect of Hope. We may all pluck out of history Jimmy Swaggart stories or Inquisition horrors, all associated with “faith” but truly, with wicked perps of many stripes. What is Science to you? I would call Aristotle the founder of the scientific method, and that it almost always involves the repeating of an experiment. Omniscience has nothing to do with “science” [pun avoided]. Do you accept Social Science, Political Science, Psyhology, Industrial Science…even Biology as a science? (It is more a study, using scientific tools) Evolution as a “scientific” idea? (Original to Democritus, also ‘discovered’ by Wallace) It can hardly be repeated and depends for credibility on its huge scientific cloak. It is another religion, as in Richard Dawkins, “Darwinian Atheism.” In my book, science must be physics or chemistry, astrophysics — subject to mathematics and its governance. Science deals only with external reality, time, space, matter and energy. But kindly note, most scientists today pose as general gurus, as in cosmologists who assert that, for example, in string theory, there are eleven dimensions and many other universes. Science does not deal with morality, love, truth, values, or, hopefully, metaphysics.
Some folks think it do!
Jared Diamond in ‘Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed’ says, “Science is often misrepresented as ‘the body of knowledge acquired by performing replicated controlled experiments in the laboratory.’ Actually, science is something much broader: the acquisition of reliable knowledge about the world.” To that end appropriate epistemological approaches must be developed.
To speak of faith as a synonym for hope, confidence, trust and dedication of spirit is one thing. But to predicate one’s life on a revelation given another is quite another.
Let me to belabor the issue: Reason and reality are universal referents available to all to the extent of their interest and learning. Faith, based on revelation, is by definition esoteric. Direct access to the source of the doctrine is given only to one, or, at best, a few. Hence, as Thomas Paine noted, a revelation is a revelation to its direct recipient only: To all others it is hearsay.
“What is asserted without proof,” said Christopher Hitchens, “can be dismissed without proof.” This is the inherent weakness of all faith based polities and the root of their ferocity. The first question necessarily faced by their promoters is: what is to be done about those unable or unwilling to make the leap? The answer history has resoundingly provided is: they will be dealt with by force. As Mrs. O’Connor noted, of necessity, in spite of all their protestations of love and brotherhood, the final argument of every faith based polity is, and must be: violence. As fragile ideological houses of cards they require extreme political and psychological repression to maintain. (Conversely this is why reason has also been the greatest liberator of the heart i.e. of feeling and spontaneity). When one can’t defend one’s doctrines by logic and evidence one must serve up threats and brutality in their stead e.g. lurid depictions of perdition and the Inquisition, perhaps their severity inversely proportional to their lack of proof.
Empirical knowledge is apodictic in being based on rigorous method and utilizing every relevant fact. But the process is not infallible, nor does it claim to be. The scientist says in effect: with the evidence available to me and to the best of my thinking I have ascertained this to be true; if new evidence comes to light that challenges my position or an error in my logic or other methodology is pointed out, I will revise it accordingly. Though all may play a role in discovery scientists make careful distinction between intuition, conjecture, hypothesis, theory and knowledge. A claim to knowledge is based on rational criteria of proof, not a claim to omniscience or infallibility.
This is what many modern philosophers brand dogmatic and “intransigent” and many religious commentators brand an alternate faith. But a scientist does not uphold belief to be uncritically accepted on pain of torture and death (when political circumstances allow). Rather he lays out his evidence and arguments before others for objective review, where they are free to accept or dismiss his conclusions. Looking at modern philosophy I can hardly fault scientists like Stephen Hawking for thinking the enterprise of science would be best jettisoning it. But unfortunately science is not a substitute for philosophy.
We must remember that on achieving political power men of faith have always burned books written by men of reason, but one never hears men of reason burning books written by men of faith. And while fundamentalists accuse scientists of promoting a faith of their own one never hears scientists’ retort that fundamentalists are actually rational.
1. You have expanded science to suit your purposes. There is a “scientific method” in biology, or sociology, but they are not true sciences. Even theoretical physics, such as Hawking’s black holes, are so fraught with arguments they can’t be said to be utterly sound, like most astrophysics, or the “Big Bang” which is theoretical, but accepted as gospel.
2. I have edited your text with comments. You seem to ignore Christopher Hitchens’ unfailing Trotskyite sympathies. He IS a brilliant entertainer and political gadfly, who, thank Goodness, tore apart Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, Mother Theresa and — oops! — Ayn Rand.
To speak of faith as a synonym for hope, confidence, trust and dedication of spirit is one thing. But to predicate one’s life on a revelation given another is quite another.
[This jump in logic is unjustified. However, the “revelation given another” may be understood by all]
Let me to belabor the issue: Reason and reality are universal referents available to all to the extent of their interest and learning. Faith, based on revelation, is by definition esoteric.
[Not if it can be understood by most people]
Direct access to the source of the doctrine is given only to one, or, at best, a few. Hence, as Thomas Paine noted, a revelation is a revelation to its direct recipient only: To all others it is hearsay.
[It is not hearsay, when revealed to the one person?]
“What is asserted without proof,” said Christopher Hitchens, “can be dismissed without proof.”
[Examine this witticism, it is specious in its logic]
This is the inherent weakness of all faith based polities and the root of their ferocity.
[We agree that no one can be forced to accept another’s viewpoint, but nothing wrong with fervent belief]
The first question necessarily faced by their promoters is: what is to be done about those unable or unwilling to make the leap?
[Didn’t Lenin write a book ,”What Is To Be Done”?]
The answer history has resoundingly provided is: they will be dealt with by force. When one can’t defend one’s doctrines by logic and evidence one must serve up threats and brutality in their stead e.g. lurid depictions of perdition and the Inquisition, perhaps their severity inversely proportional to their lack of proof.
[Your example is selective]
We must remember that on achieving political power men of faith have always burned books written by men of reason, but one never hears men of reason burning books written by men of faith. And while fundamentalists accuse scientists of promoting a faith of their own one never hears scientists’ retort that fundamentalists are actually rational.
[Power corrupts all, the French Revolution prided itself on rationality and slaughtered thousands ; same with Marxism, Fascism. Wouldn’t you rather have lived in Calvin’s Geneva (assuming you could pass muster as a “Chrisitan”?) Solomon : “Man has dominated man to his injury”]
Pax vobiscum!
Mr. Dahl, a few remarks…
True science doesn’t consist solely of knowledge, but includes less certain gropings e.g. hypothesis, theory, statistical projections – which are acknowledged for what they are. Anyone who treats the Big Bang theory as gospel is not being scientific.
I’m fully aware of Hitch’s imperfections.
That a revelation may be understood by all doesn’t preclude the possibility of its error. It is by definition esoteric in that its proofs are not objectively and independently verifiable.
Mr. Dahl, should you persist in nay-saying me I shall be forced frown frightfully.
Btw re the French revolutionists celebration of reason: It’s like truth or friend of the working man – anyone can claim to be such. Reason had become a much revered concept, hence paying lip service to it was in order. If I hear a fundamentalist proclaim his dogma THE TRUTH I don’t say, “then to hell with truth.”
TO THE READER: Hopefully, no antipathy between me and Herr Fox is apparent. I met Ed last year in Toronto, and vouchsafe his philosophic nature. Our exchanges very much exemplify the atheist-turned-believer versus the believer-turned-atheist. I have found the Bible to be straightforward, non-contradictory, and the only plausible guide to life everlasting in a “paradise” [on earth]. Science even makes that plausible.
Reason is our highest faculty and makes possible our appreciation of art, music, love, politics, and accurate sexual stimulation of the female. This website is one of the few oases on the Internet, where reason filters out much of “reality’s” dross. In philosophy, I would assert that Ayn Rand is the single best author, as she exudes a modern day Aristotelian glow in tune with America, Mom, and (low-fat, sugar-free, organic) apple pie. Save for her spiritual stance. And once one has gotten a taste of logic from her, other philosophers beckon.
When Ed and I “go at it” I submit, as in Scripture, it is “iron being sharpened by iron.” I would like to assure the reader that he is not physically deformed, malodorous, presumptive, consumptive, or given to hysterical display.
Mr. Dahl you are too kind. Would that all my adversaries were as vastly erudite, charming and gracious as you.
I enjoy following your exchanges, Stephen and Ed.
Thanks Professor Hicks. They’re good workouts. If only I could make Mr. Dahl understand that on issues where we disagree I’m right and he’s wrong. (!).