From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Sun Jan 26 2003 - 01:48:04 GMT
DMB,
DMB said:
OK. I'll bite. Why do pragmatists dislike Kant? I thought that, unlike the
German idealists, they accepted what Kant said about this.
Matt:
Oh, God no. Gardner might want to read the pragmatists as Kantians (that's
basically what he does when he says that James was a realist), but I
seriously doubt that that is a useful way to ascertain their importance.
Firstly, most histories of philosophy read Kant as the beginning of German
idealism. Along with this, Kant also started contemporary realism. There
is some considerable debate amongst Kant's interpreters as to whether he is
one or the other (many say he's simply too ambiguous to tell one way or the
other; see the contemporary Kantian P.F. Strawson's The Bounds of Sense).
Pragmatists don't want to be either. I take Kant as one of the main
representatives of SOM because of his reiteration of the Greek distinction
between appearance and reality for the modern world.
When we take the Cartesian stance that there is an "organ" in our mind that
can, say, detect Truth, we are saying that we have an organ that can pierce
behind appearances to the real Truth, rather than apparent truth. This
creates a real, true, ahistorical structure that, if we can find it, we
will have the key to which we can then unlock the secrets of the world.
Pragmatists don't think there is a key, they simply think that we cope with
the world around us.
Matt
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