Monday, January 24, 2005

I'm back--Kant and Adorno: whatta team!

I have been away for quite a long time, I realize. I had other things I had to do. Anyway, I'm back.

I have been reading Kant's Critique of Pure Reason on the LRT as I go to work, just because it's one of those books people always assume you should have read. Well, after quite a few rides on the LRT, I have learned the following:

*Kant tidies up metaphysics in his mission to save it from pure idealism, religiosity or empiricism. He does it by stating what he thinks the proper business of metaphysics is.
*The proper business of metaphysics turns out to be a priori questions. Everything else is just psychology, or just phenomenology, or just ethics, or just aesthetics when it isn't "transcendental". No more messing about with everyday facts. Now the business of philosophy was to be "higher things" to do with reason, understanding and cognition.
*Mostly, this will consist of thinking about how we end up having ideas without reference to the sensual world or the world of objects in any way other than an abstract way (like in geometry).
*I have a sneaking suspicion that the marginalization of philosophy specifically and the humanities in general (away from science) is probably due to Kant's tidying-up tendencies. He didn't think he was marginalizing philosophy, but that is what happened. And he has written about his idea for a modern university--today, much university structure is based on models that came from some of Kant's ideas.

Today, I opened up Theodor Adorno's Negative Dialectics right at the end (I had to return the book so that I can recall it again) and there was Adorno railing away about the very same problems I have with Kant.

I mean, wow. I wasn't off-track while tracking on the LRT! Of course Adorno said everything much more nicely than I would, which part of why he got to be so famous. And good on him! Usually I'd read somebody like him first and then read the Big Thinker so it sure is nice to have things go the other way for once.

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