Thursday, March 5, 2009
From 3/4: Critiquing "Pure" Reason
In finishing up Kant's Prolegomena, we considered the assorted conundrums which reason gets itself into when speculating about things outside of our experience. Whether it be the indentity of the self, the beginning and subsequent expansion of the universe, or the existence of God, pure reason proves quite capable of backing itself up into an idealogical corner. So does Kant prove successful in saving reason from itself here? Where do you see him as agreeing or disagreeing with Hume when it comes to metaphysical speculation? Any further thoughts on the antinomies? Critique away!
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After attempting to tackle the ideas put forth by Kant, I can say that I’ve gained a greater respect for the brilliant minds that are able to make sense of them. The antimonies Kant presents are bewildering in that, while they are central to metaphysics, they fall beyond the realm of both pure reason and experience, and therefore (as far as those two epistemological theories we’ve explored can tell) have no means of being resolved. Whether or not this should determine if these perplexities are worth pondering I suppose should be left to the individual seeker. I think that our tendency to want answers for questions that are unanswerable drives us to grab onto whatever helps us make sense of them, but this is exactly what Kant warns would be a threat to metaphysics. I think Hume’s ideas align with Kant’s in that they both seem to posit a limit to reason: Hume distrusts pure mental constructs altogether and places trustworthy knowledge in the realm of experience, while Kant would like to reconcile pure concepts of reason with knowledge gained through experience by presenting the categories of understanding. So I think it seems that both men (and myself) admit that, as we are bound by the limited means of our mortality, we will never really be certain of any absolute truth concerning the creation and existence of the universe, our identity, or a God because we are not able to be certain about any absolute truth. All we can do is question, propose new ideas, and be satisfied with never having a solution.
The final class on Kant had included a variety of mind boggling questions. My favorite as well as most confusing component of class for me was when we broke up into groups and completed the worksheet entitled “Kant’s Antinomies of Pure Reason.” I think that it is very intriguing to think about how an individual can attempt to grasp the world and life by looking entire universe and the smallest and most simple parts of life. “Does the universe begin at a certain point in time or has it always existed?” After thinking long and hard, I feel that Kant as well as every other human being will never be able to have the capacity to understand a question of that magnitude. The universe is too large for any human to ever completely understand. My favorite question of the class was whether human beings are really free. I may break with Kant but I believe that human beings are free, but only to a certain extent. I enjoy thinking about questions like these, but am happy that I do not have these merely impossible ideas running through my mind like I am sure Kant did. If I could add a question to his list it would be whether any one person could actually grasp how long “eternity” is.
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