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Pure Reason

  
 
Fist Fun
15:51 / 02.01.02
"I had to abolish knowledge to make room for faith"
Immanuel Kant

Anybody studied the Kritik der reinen Vernunft(Critique of Pure reason)? Anybody have any opinions(expert or lay, informed or freestyle) on the central idea that reason is to be complemented by belief and imagination?
 
 
SMS
15:48 / 03.01.02
Haven't studied Kant, but it certainly is true that belief and imagination are necessary for reason to do us much good. Despite my attempts to define a few first principles, and thereby derive the whole of knowledge, I always find myself stuck fairly early in the process.
 
 
alas
05:06 / 04.01.02
First, a confession: I've read lots of people who seem very smart & who talk about the CofPR and Kant, and, therefore, sometimes I half-convince myself that *I've* actually read it, but . . . I haven't read Kant's CofPR. (Whew. I feel so much better . . .)

That said:
quote:Anybody have any opinions(expert or lay, informed or freestyle) on the central idea that reason is to be complemented by belief and imagination?

A question: does faith = belief + imagination? I think I like that construct of faith--does it come from Kant, or is that your own freestyling definition? or is it from elsewhere? (I also wonder: do you think "faith" is a scary word to most (Western) people, today?)

Here's where I'm coming from: My sis is a fundamentalist christian; i love her dearly, and respect her for really attempting to live her beliefs (unlike many Christians, she and her husband take what Christ said about poverty, for instance, pretty literally), but they are extremely distrustful of virtually everything that strikes *me* as *imagination*--e.g. they won't let their children read many works of fiction, especially fantasy, e.g. even the now ubiquitous Harry Potter, because of "sorcery," etc.

At the same time, in an exchange of letters, sis and I have had an ongoing discussion about faith and science, and I've become 1/2 convinced that part of my problem with christian fundamentalism is precisely that it actually lacks faith; it insists that the Bible can be held to a "scientific" proof. (The world _was_ created in 6, 24-hour days, etc.) So, fundamentalism actually seems to encourage a worshipping of the Bible (as translated into whatever version of English is current--and interpreted in a very specific, narrow, peculiar way) rather than God. (Which is, in Biblical terms, a kind of idolatry, methinks.)

But, beyond that, fundamentalism gives to a kind of scientistic [rather that fully scientific] thought a kind of ultimate authority for determining "truth." Poetic truth, on the other hand--i.e., the lightning truth of a powerful metaphor, or the way an old story has an untranslatable core of wisdom--seems almost alien to this worldview.
Now, if I didn't love my sister--who's a fabulous pianist and a very funny, bright person--I'd probably have just interpreted this as a problem peculiar to narrow-minded (i.e., not as smart as me) fundamentalists and have had done with it. And maybe that just goes to show how strong emotions like love interfere with reason--as post-Enlightenment "common sense" has long suggested. But my gut, my instinct, my faith?, says no: something deep in me, something I don't entirely "understand" in a kind of rationalistic way, says there's more to it than that.

I think fundamentalists in the US, anyway, are simply an extreme example, ironically, of the kind of faithlessness that extreme rationality encourages, and which inevitably seems simply blind to its own assumptions--blind to its own bedrock faith commitments--rather than "free" of them. Atheists can as easily practice this kind of thought, perhaps even more easily, because they are *likely* to be even more fully committed to post-Enlightenment Western notions of rationality.

(So does that mean I can now pretend to have read Kant? . . .)

[ 04-01-2002: Message edited by: lask ]
 
 
Fist Fun
17:34 / 06.01.02
That is an interesting point that you bring up Alas. Do you have to have actually read a body of work to benefits from the ideas contained within?
I think if you are approaching something from academic stance then you would need to refer to the originals. Otherwise I think, although inferior to an involved understanding of the original, secondhand knowledge is worthwhile and useful. Do we have to have read Plato to benefit from the analogy of the cave?
Thoughts, anyone?
 
 
Cavatina
01:06 / 07.01.02
Buk, I guess it depends on the use that you want to make of this knowledge. But why set up an opposition between 'academic' and 'other, everyday' purposes? If we really do think a certain author's ideas are worthwhile, then why not read hir text itself, whenever possible? I'll go further and say we should *always historicize* - that is, put the text in its historical context and look at its ongoing reception. The changes in a work's reception over time, since its first publication, can be really illuminating.

OK. All that may take considerably more time, patience and intellectual effort. But the problem with relying only on secondary stuff is that some very readable accounts are dodgy, popularised versions which miss the mark. Even if they're not, they are almost certainly appropriations made in the interests of a particular group. I'm not at all knocking this; but it does mean that there will be a particular *take* on certain elements, and some points may be elided or omitted altogether. There can also be outright mistakes; this is a distinct possibility when a text has been translated from another language into English.

By way of example, take what became, for a time, the popular translation of Derrida's il n 'y a pas de hors-texte' ('there is no out-side text, made in Of Grammatology) as 'there is nothing outside the text'. This was then taken by some commentators to mean that Derrida was saying that there is *only* textuality and that he was denying any connection with a material reality beyond it. This also circulated in some quarters as a flat denial of any pre-existing reality - until a careful reading of his text by Dominick LaCapra and others scotched that misinterpretation and refocussed on the inside/outside the text distinction, and whether we can decide where text ends and the real begins.
 
 
Fist Fun
04:30 / 07.01.02
I agree secondhand accounts are to be treated with caution. I'll take this blurb from the back of The Whig Interpretation of History by Herbert Butterfield on historians
"in his search for origins and causes, he can easily select those facts that give support to his thesis and thus eliminate other facts equally important to the total picture"
It would be foolish to accept any interpretation at face value without an involved understanding of the subject.
However, I would still contend that a human being has a finite reserve of "time, patience and intellectual effort". If we were to focus on a complete, involved understanding of every subject we came across then this would limit our ability to study other topics and would thus decrease the breadth of our knowledge. I think secondhand accounts or summaries can be very useful simply because they allow us a quick grasp on a subject. As long as we understand that we are still 99% ignorant and we treat secondhand knowledge with due caution then this seems reasonable. Otherwise we risk a community where we don't have time to be anything other than specialists and thus lack the insight given by differing perspectives.
Take, for instance, your example of translation. This would mean approaching any work in the original language or, perhaps, reading several different translations (if they exist) to assure accuracy. While I would recommend this for an academic it just woulddn't be feasible for most other people.
If every endeavour of curiosity must be faced with "time, patience and intellect" then only an elite who possess these quantities in abundance would feel the freedom to be curious.
 
 
alas
04:30 / 07.01.02
. . . and whether we can decide where text ends and the real begins.

Or where "the real" of my head, my thinking, my experience, ends and the bastardized version of Kant running around in it ends?

quote: If every endeavour of curiosity must be faced with "time, patience and intellect" then only an elite who possess these quantities in abundance would feel the freedom to be curious.

Ok, time and patience I understand--I think--and have too little of both, but what is intellect? I think, but don't have time or patience to check right now [insert annoying smiley face], it comes from the Latin "inteligere" meaning "to distinguish between." To learn where one thing ends and another begins? But is that the most important quality of thought? Always? (What about imagination + belief?)

I like playing with ideas--for fun, in a low-pressure kind of way. I also agree that historicizing thoughts, patiently, carefully, is very important. Sometimes one of these "good things" is more important for me than the other. I'm not a Kant specialist, nor have I ever played one on TV, but I know that I am affected by his thinking through other people, probably in ways I don't fully understand, partly because it's hard to say where one writer ends and another begins. I was re-reading Benjamin (in translation) the other day, and realized I had used examples of his repeatedly (e.g., his discussion of how most people in the 19th century lived in houses where someone had died in one of the rooms but that is less and less the case, today). I had completely forgotten that that idea came originally from Benjamin. What does that mean?

I like Buk's idea of intellectual humility. Although academic posing can be a very amusing spectator sport . . .
 
 
Cavatina
10:02 / 07.01.02
Buk, I don't think that at base we're really in disagreement. I certainly do not want to deny the great usefulness of good commentaries and translations. And I agree that we when we use them, we treat them with caution and recognise our own ignorance. I do, however, see merit in attempting to read the original text (say, Plato, in a reliable translation) as I said, whenever possible, without approaching it first through the lense of someone else's commentary - and striving to understand it. I value being made aware of the cultural difference of a text by coming up against language used in an entirely different historical and social context. If everyone relied only on commentaries, ideas could be lost which might be of value to a later culture.

And I do not see having to make an intellectual effort (the word 'intellect'wasn't mine, please note) to grapple with this as being 'elitist'. Surely the choice to spend one's time in this way - however long it takes - is open to anyone who can read and has access to and can use resources?
 
 
Fist Fun
10:31 / 07.01.02
Yep, I think we are pretty much in agreement there. Sorry for the misquote. Secondhand interpretations, eh?
 
  
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