Source: Facebook

(diary)

Kant is interesting really because on the one hand, I see him as the sort of root of all continental philosophical evil, and the man who gave license to the ‘liars’ with:

—“I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.”—

For which he will ever be damned.

On the other hand, he does produce a few gems. Particularly that you should try never to lie, and a simple test of moral action:

–“the categorical imperative … Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law”–

But he goes into god’s plan:

—“The friction among men, the inevitable antagonism, which is a mark of even the largest societies and political bodies, is used by Nature as a means to establish a condition of quiet and security. …. The history of mankind can be seen, in the large, as the realization of Nature’s secret plan to bring forth a perfectly constituted state as the only condition in which the capacities of mankind can be fully developed, and also bring forth that external relation among states which is perfectly adequate to this end.”—Kant

I state this instead as “Any super predator such as man will evolve to create a condition of pacification of the universe around him. history of man is of his pacification of the earth. Sometimes more so than he desires.”

–“The problem of establishing a perfect civic constitution is dependent upon the problem of a lawful external relation among states and cannot be solved without a solution of the latter problem.”—Kant

I state this instead as “competitive pressures determine group evolutionary strategy, expressed as norms, morals, laws and institutions.”