Riku Sayuj's Reviews > Kant: A Very Short Introduction

This series is very good... I should consider this one... but not yet..

Kalliope wrote: "This series is very good... I should consider this one... but not yet.."

Mostly the VSIs have been pretty good. It is rapidly becoming my goto series when I want to start a new field of reading.

I can never understand philosophy of Kant. I am of the opinion that he is full of contradictions.

Vikas wrote: "I can never understand philosophy of Kant. I am of the opinion that he is full of contradictions."

the containing multitudes type? :)

Kant is one of the most difficult philosophers whose ideas I have always struggled to fathom. I have this book with me and, thanks to your review, wl get my hands laid on it soon.

Sumirti wrote: "Kant is one of the most difficult philosophers whose ideas I have always struggled to fathom. I have this book with me and, thanks to your review, wl get my hands laid on it soon."

He is also the most fundamental among the moderns. So not much choice. :)

Perhaps worth mentioning: of all philosophers, Kant was the one my tutors suggested not bothering with in the original unless we felt we had to. A lot of Kant is really badly, opaquely written, but there's an enormous amount of secondary literature on him. So at least start out with introductions like this!

Wastrel wrote: "Perhaps worth mentioning: of all philosophers, Kant was the one my tutors suggested not bothering with in the original unless we felt we had to. A lot of Kant is really badly, opaquely written, but..."

Thanks. Quite true. One of the instances where the secondary work might have overtaken the original work. I will give it a shot though. Nothing like reading the original sentences to get a feel for the mind behind them...

I don't mind certain complexity but in Kantian philosophy there is no unifying factor. As we know, the most simple way, not the only one, to resolve philosophical contradiction is to identify which thesis is more basic than others and then try to sort out by preserving most basic one. so it makes structure more improved after every cycle.

So in that sense Kant is very vague, partial and selective. I am not a student of philosophy but I find Socrates, Aristotle, David Hume, Spinoza and Bertrand Russell more important and useful than Kant (only because he was hardly sure of anything).

I disagree - Kant is sure of more than Russell is, and vastly more than Hume is!
I don't see how you can call Kant 'partial and selective' (he has one of the most all-encompassing and systematic philosophies of anyone), and I'm not sure i'd agree with 'vague', either (on the contrary, he often seems quite pedantic).

I... don't understand what you mean about cycles and contradictions and 'which thesis is more basic' and the like, sorry.

Vikas wrote: "I don't mind certain complexity but in Kantian philosophy there is no unifying factor. As we know, the most simple way, not the only one, to resolve philosophical contradiction is to identify which..."

I don’t know.. I really don’t find Kant’s work (at least his work post-critique1) any more non-committal than, say Plato’s total body of work. And as Wastrel says, it is surely as complete a philosophy as you are going to get outside of Aristotle, taking in everything from Cosmology, to Theology, to Ethics and Art...

Of course, I might be mistaken in my impression. Which commentaries did you consult? Maybe that has a role to play too.

@Wastrel: Well then we have to agree to disagree:

According to Kantian invention of "Heteronomy"- freedom is opposite of necessity. Here, he encouraged people to distrust consideration of pain, pleasure or sense of responsibility as motivations to do anything (I like this critique of utilitarian philosophy, fair enough!).

Then he contradicts himself through his own philosophy of “motive” by requesting for a strong demand for morality rather than freedom as motivation of action.

He even goes on to say, motive should be of “certain kind”- only moral duty can be a good motive. So according to Kant, now for any action to be good, it should not be chosen out of freedom or free will (as he had earlier advocated) but for the sake of some “moral law” or “moral duty”. It would be safe to say in voice of Kant- any action is done for sake of moral duty is a good action.

Famous case study of Murderer-at-the-door exposes that Kantian morality stands at a distance from real world. Imagine- if your friend were hiding inside your home, and a person with an intention to kill your friend came to your door and asked you where your friend was. Kantian philosophers believe that telling a lie is always a violation of ones own dignity ( as per Kantian moral law) and hence telling the killer about your friend’s whereabouts is the right thing to do.

He was also against suicide not because he found suicide inhumane but because he felt “you have a moral duty to preserve yourself”.

Last time I checked, this complete Orwellian submission as a slave of totalitarian state or moral law was preached by religious fundamentalists. I am happy you like Kantian rants about morality but I don’t and I distrust people who preach unconditional morality to others as a forced proposition.

I can point out many other contradictions in his philosophy but I think it's useless to argue about taste and opinions concerning philosophy through comment section. So I may not be able to contribute anymore to this discussion. Though I am happy you find more meaning and "pedantic" value in Kantian philosophy. Take care.

Vikas wrote: "@Wastrel: Well then we have to agree to disagree:

According to Kantian invention of "Heteronomy"- freedom is opposite of necessity. Here, he encouraged people to distrust consideration of pain, p..."

I understand why you would want to engage in a discussion on this here.

But, to me the 'unifying factor' in Kantian phil would be the conception of ourselves as free agents who can govern their own lives/inquiry/sciences according to self-given rational principles.

I don't see the complete authoritarianism you criticize in that. Of course, Kant leaned towards "duty" in all his atitudes to social/political organization. But this 'duty' is always self-imposed -- has to be. Otherwise he asks his free-agents to refuse it merely on principle!

So your characterization of Orwellian submission is in many ways a particular interpretation of Kant's writings -- and I am not saying it is wrong, just that at the moment I see Kant in a different light, having read only 2-3 directed commentaries, in addition to about half-a-dozen or so 'philosophy bundle' books.

Which is why I am curious to know of the commentaries that colored your reading. Would be educational in my own quest.

Riku wrote: "Sumirti wrote: "Kant is one of the most difficult philosophers whose ideas I have always struggled to fathom. I have this book with me and, thanks to your review, wl get my hands laid on it soon."
..."

Exactly, Riku. I agree. Kant's philosophy has its impact on almost every field I have come across. And as you say, there is no choice. Apart from this introduction series, can you please give me some other commentaries or introductions to Kant through which I can learn the outline or the sketch of his philosophy?

There is no real contradiction here. Kant believes that 'free will' is only found when following self-created laws. That is, he is talking about autonomy, not liberty. If reason is the essence of humanity, and hence of the human individual, then the human is only true to themselves when they act out of reason, not out of 'baser instincts'. And in Kant's conception of reason, reason is a law-giving faculty, so true freedom, autonomy, lies in obeying the laws one has decided rationally for oneself.

I'm not saying I agree with Kant (you could disagree with him in interesting ways at every stage of that argument), but it's not really an inherent contradiction.

Regarding Orwellian submission to a totalitarian state - well of course some Kantians are totalitarians. Others, however, are not. There has always been a strong current of anti-authoritarian Kantians. Modern 'libertarianism', for instance, often has Kantian underpinnings.

About the murderer at the door: sure, this is very troubling for modern readers. But it's not clear that it's inherent in Kant: almost all modern Kantians disagree with Kant on this issue while cleaving to his general system. It's also important to remember that this wasn't some weird thing Kant came up with - this was conventional morality, or at least had been. Lying in many cultures is considered worse than murder, or at least not excusable to prevent it. Consider the Jesuit invention of weak equivocation, for instance: speaking words that are true in one sense but are expected to be misunderstood in another, false, sense. Jesuits used weak equivocation in real-life murderer-at-door situations (for instance in England, where consorting with Jesuits was punishable by being burned alive, and both Jesuits and their followers needed to find a way to avoid informing on one another).

But most people - even a lot of Catholics (Pascal, for instance), let alone Protestants, thought that equivocating to save a life was a heinous sin - a nation of people who happily burned people to death for having a slightly incorrect bible were shocked, outraged and appalled at the idea of being intentionally misleading just to save someone from death. And the really interesting thing is: even Jesuits were unsure about this. And Jesuits (those who believed in equivocation) felt that they needed equivocation because the idea of outright lying was abhorrent. The idea that when a soldier asked a houseowner "is there a jesuit in the house?" the houseowner might morally just say 'no' even if it wasn't true... it was unthinkable! [The Jesuits would have advised saying something like "there's no jesuits in this house", while secretly pointing at another house with a finger hidden in the sleeve]

The most extreme proponant of untruth, Navarrus, even went so far as to allow people to lie in speech in certain situations, so long as they were thinking the truth... but that compromise was swiftly ruled heretical by the Pope.

Of course, to modern readers this is all absurd. But Kant was writing only a century after the condemnation of Navarrus. Kant, at the time, was defending the ordinary, traditional, common-sense morality against radical new thinkers who suggested that lying could sometimes be OK. (and even then, the guys Kant was arguing against iirc only believed it was OK to lie to save someone else's life - lying to save your own life, even from unjust murder, was agreed by all to be impermissable). So Kant's (to us) surprising beliefs on this issue should be read in the context of his time, not necessarily as an inherent product of his system of thought.

Sumirti wrote: "Apart from this introduction series, can you please give me some other commentaries or introductions to Kant through which I can learn the outline or the sketch of his philosophy?
"

Give me a week. i will rank the books I sample in their order of utility. :)

Oh, I also meant to (I think, so far as I know) correct something there: Kant doesn't say that anything done for the sake of moral duty is good. Kant doesn't evaluate actions on the basis of motive alone. To be a good act, the act has to be actually a good one, not just believed to be good. You can't praise someone (Kant says) for doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, but nor can you praise them for doing the wrong thing for the right reasons (well, maybe you can, I don't know, but he certainly doesn't think the act itself is made good by the good motivations).

Wastrel wrote: "Oh, I also meant to (I think, so far as I know) correct something there: Kant doesn't say that anything done for the sake of moral duty is good. Kant doesn't evaluate actions on the basis of motive..."

But wouldn't a universal ethical principle preclude all 'wrong' if adhered to?

Yes (allegedly... I think). But what Vikas talked about was actions done for the sake of moral duty. Actions done for the sake of moral duty aren't necessarily morally dutiful actions.

Or maybe they are. But that's certainly not clear - you'd need to hammer out exactly what is meant by 'for the sake of' and whether that requires true causation (if there is such a thing) or merely intention, and I guess you'd also have to get into a conceptual equivalent of the sense data dispute (real concept of moral duty vs simulacrum of concept of moral duty, etc). But I think the most natural reading makes that phrase all about the psychology of the act.

Riku wrote: "Sumirti wrote: "Apart from this introduction series, can you please give me some other commentaries or introductions to Kant through which I can learn the outline or the sketch of his philosophy?
..."

Aye! aye! Sir! :)