online book Before the Day Breaks. In this book Velikovsky writes about his correspondence and conversations with Albert Einstein. I read some of this book before ever reading anything else of Velikovsky, or having any idea of what was proposed in his book Worlds in Collision. Before the Day Breaks is a very well written book, where Velikovsky's main argument is that gravity and inertia are not the only forces acting on the solar system. After Velikovsky published his book Worlds in Collision he has
Kant is a deontological philosopher; that is, in examining morality he says that the ends must not be looked at, only the means. Kant began by carefully drawing a pair of crucial distinctions among the judgments we do actually make. The first distinction separates a priori from a posteriori judgments by reference to the origin of our knowledge of them. A priori judgments are statements for which there is no appeal to experience in order to dertermine what is true and false. A posteriori judgments
Compare Mill and Kant's ethical theories; which makes a better societal order? John Stuart Mill (1808-73) believed in an ethical theory known as utilitarianism. There are many formulation of this theory. One such is, "Everyone should act in such a way to bring the largest possibly balance of good over evil for everyone involved." However, good is a relative term. What is good? Utilitarians disagreed on this subject. Mill made a distinction between happiness and sheer sensual pleasure. He defines
Immanuel Kant and St. Thomas Aquinas account for the existence of truth in sharply contrasting ways. Kant locates all truth inside the mind, as a pure product of reason, operating by means of rational categories. Although Kant acknowledges that all knowledge originates in the intuition of the senses, the intelligibility of sense experience he attributes to innate forms of apperception and to categories inherent to the mind. The innate categories shape the “phenomena” of sensible being, and Kant
The Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant Criticism is Kant's original achievement; it identifies him as one of the greatest thinkers of mankind and as one of the most influential authors in contemporary philosophy. But it is important to understand what Kant means by'criticism', or 'critique'. In a general sense the term refers to a general cultivation of reason 'by way of the secure path of science' (Bxxx). More particularly, its use is not negative, but positive, a fact that finds expression
Immanuel Kant's The Grounding For The Metaphysics of Morals and John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill are philosophers who addressed the issues of morality in terms of how moral traditions are formed. Immanuel Kant has presented one viewpoint in "The Grounding For The Metaphysics of Morals" that is founded on his belief that the worth of man is inherent in his ability to reason. John Stuart Mill holds another opinion as presented in the book, "Utilitarianism" that
Immanuel Kant's Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals In his publication, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant supplies his readers with a thesis that claims morality can be derived from the principle of the categorical imperative. The strongest argument to support his thesis is the difference between actions in accordance with duty and actions in accordance from duty. To setup his thesis, Kant first draws a distinction between empirical and “a priori” concepts. Empirical
seen as universalizing force (with a decidedly Western form of the universal). Said, for example, writes that “Cultural experience or indeed every cultural form is radically, quintessentially hybrid, and if it has been the practice in the West since Immanuel Kant to isolate cultural and aesthetic realms from the worldly domain, it is now time to rejoin them” (“Connecting Empire to Secular Interpretation,” CA 58). On the other hand, John Rawls and others find in Kant’s 1795 essay “On Perpetual Peace”
An Analysis of Solipsism in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason My goal is to examine solipsism and discover how Immanuel Kant's Transcendental Idealism could be subject to a charge of being solipsistic. Following this, I will briefly review the destructive impact this charge would have on certain of Kant’s positions. After the case for solipsism is made, I intend to describe a possible line of rebuttal from Kant’s perspective that could be made to the charge. The issue of solipsism is intriguing
A Short Talk on Preparing a Talk 1. Introduction This paper offers suggestions for more effective ways to plan the talk, and a checklist of points you should consider from the moment you know you will give a talk. Careful preparation and effective delivery are the keys to giving quality speeches or presentations. Without sufficient preparation, you may find yourself unable to respond to questions raised by the audience, which will lessen the impact of what you have to say. No matter how
What Anti-Individualists Cannot Know A Priori ABSTRACT: The attempt to hold both anti-individualism and privileged self-knowledge may have the absurd consequence that someone could know a priori propositions that are knowable only empirically. This would be so if such an attempt entailed that one could know a priori both the contents of one’s own thoughts and the anti-individualistic entailments from those thought-contents to the world. For then one could also come to know a priori (by simple
Evil and the Possibility of the Conversion into Good According to Kant, radical evil is the deep inherent blemish of our species that does not spare even the best of people. Despite judging the extirpation of such evil as an impossibility, Kant holds out the possibility of converting evil into good by means of human forces. But how can this be given the radical evil of human nature? I articulate various problems that arise from Kant’s conception of conversion while exploring certain resources
On the Futures of the Subject ABSTRACT: This paper is intended as an inquiry regarding contemporary critical assays of subjectivity. In response to the contemporary politics of representation, both in expressions of essentialist identity politics and in versions of social constructivism, and their implication of all pedagogical practices in transfers of power, I wish to project the question of the subject’s futures. I choose to discuss the limits of the interior, monadic subject for consideration
The Beautiful in Kant's Third Critique and Aristotle's Poetics ABSTRACT: I argue that Kant's analysis of the experience of the beautiful in the third Critique entails an implicit or potential experience of the sublime, that is, the sublime as he himself describes it. Finding the sublime in the beautiful is what I call philosophical beauty. I then consider some aspects of Aristotle's analysis of tragedy in the Poetics, specifically his identification of the key elements of tragedy as those involving
survive. As a result, the most developed, smart and enterprising people will prevail and as social evolution progresses, they will form a superior society. As opposed to Naturalism, the ethical theory of duty occupies a completely different domain. Immanuel Kant, the major advocate of this ethical appro... ... middle of paper ... ...ity of cases (e.g. for our purpose of establishing universality). In other words, an almost-universal law is a law that would be universal if a negligible set of cases
Humanity is taught to be moral, to do good and avoid evil. However those lessons become foolish when we ask what is morality, the thing that we are told to achieve. For many morality is doing what is good and doing good is moral. This roundabout answer may be satisfactory to some that only look at the surface of the issue, however once the digging begins the grad question of morality comes into question. While this question has been looked an infinite number of times without being universally solved
something as controversial as the possibility of a standard of aesthetic judgment, one must take into account the many different perspectives that already exist on the matter. For centuries now, some of the greatest philosophers such as David Hume and Immanuel Kant have attempted to answer this timeless question. However, understandings and interpretations of art are constantly evolving. This has made a clear concise answer difficult to find. Throughout this essay, I will discuss previous opinions and
It seems most appropriate, before having any mention of Hume’s philosophy, to briefly enunciate the concept of empiricism. Prior to Immanuel Kant’s solicitation of Transcendental Idealism, the schools of epistemological thought were divided into rationalism and the aforementioned empiricism. The former is the belief that knowledge is innate, and that logic and reason are the chief methods of acquiring that knowledge. Conversely, empiricists believe that knowledge is sensory, or experience, based;
Kant, and Causal Law Introduction In the critique of pure reason, Kant states, “All alternations occur in accordance with the law of the connection of cause and effect.”1 This statement is interpreted in two different ways: weak readings and strong readings. Weaker readings basically suggest that Kant's statement only refers to “All events have a cause”; however, the strong readings suggest that “the Second Analogy is committed not just to causes, but to causal laws as well.”2 To understand the
The issue of euthanasia is one surrounded by much controversy. Here we will look at the moral system of Immanuel Kant and John Stewart Mill, the argument for euthanasia, and how each philosopher would respond to that argument. Immanuel Kant and John Stewart Mill have different ethical views therefore they view the issue of Euthanasia differently. Immanuel Kant holds a deontological, or duty based, ethical view. This means that for something to have moral value it must be done from duty. The basis