This essay was written about 9 months ago and I have just finished re-reading it and modifying it to keep it current with my ongoing, evolving thought process.
-- dgb, Aug. 9th, 2008.
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Kant's first challenge was to 'epistemology'. Some might say that Kant, in effect, destroyed epistemology. At least, he seriously deflated the epistemology balloon -- which included the balloon of science, sensory awareness, empiricism, and reason.
Epistemological optimism which before Kant or at least before Hume reigned supreme --took a huge double hit from Hume, the supreme skeptic, and then Kant who wasn't much less skeptical -- with Kant throwing the final epistemological 'knockout punch' in the form of what he called the 'noumenal world' which was 'the essence' of the world outside ourselves that in effect was 'unknowable' because it was above and beyond the capacity of our senses to 'know' this noumenal world. What Kant was in effect pointing to was the limitation of our senses relative to what might also be called 'objective knowledge'. All we could/can 'know' was/is our 'phenomenal world' which is the 'world-as-it-appears-to-us-through-our-own-private-senses (and logic and judgments)' -- i.e. our own privately construed 'subjective world'.
What Kant did that drove many a philosopher to the brink of insanity and/or suicide was he created a 'black and white epistemological dualistic world' where the 'black (man's subjective, phenomenal world) could not know the white (the objective, noumenal world) because the latter was outside the domain and power of man's senses.
However, Kant was wrong here. Kant's epistemological mistake was that he looked at the world 'dualistically' -- but not 'dialectically'. There is a huge epistemological difference. By looking at he world dualistically in terms of a black and white division between our 'subjective, phenomenal world of appearances' vs. the 'real, objective, but unknowable, noumenal world', Kant gave the impression to many that epistemology was in essence and effect -- useless and a waste of time -- since it was powerless to know and understand the 'real objective, noumenal world'.
This does not happen if you look at epistemology -- and the dualistic division of these two worlds (phenomenal and noumenal) -- dialectically as well as dualistically. 'Dialectically' implies that the two worlds -- our subjective, phenomenal world and the objective, noumenal world -- touch and make contact with each other; indeed, they often collide with each other and are at least partly intertwined with each other.
Furthermore, there is an imperative, survival relationship between the two. Our subjective, phenomenal world has to 'structurally represent our objective, noumenal world accurately' -- at least accurately enough in order for us to survive.
There are many different degrees of errors possible between the two worlds -- i.e., between our subjective, phenomenal world misrepresenting our objective, noumenal world. These errors can range from the most unimportant and benign to the most critical in terms of our survival. Misrepresentations of our subjective, phenomenal world relative to our objective, noumenal world can in some critical situations be the difference between life and death. Some may live where others die -- based simply on the degree of difference between an accurate representation of a significant life danger vs. a non-representation or misrepresentation of the same.
A four year old might properly understand the significant danger of an approaching car whereas a two year old might not.
One person might significantly represent the danger of running a car in a closed garage whereas another might not. One person might better represent the danger of a sheet of ice on a highway whereas another might not. One person might better represent the significance of the danger of a sheet of ice on his own driveway whereas another might not.
I dispatch 'mobility' vans and cars for a living, and the day before Christmas we had a customer who died from a heart attack after he slipped on a patch of ice on his own driveway. He was a 69 year old dialysis patient in dire health straits as it was. He had told our driver a week before Christmas that he would be lucky to make it to Christmas. Combine his weak health with an ice storm the previous night, and insufficient precautions the morning after the ice storm -- he was being escorted at the time but still slipped and fell -- and you had the recipe for a tragic accident.
When we think 'dialectically inside the epistemological dualism' in terms of 'a structural similarity between the two' and/or a 'structural, dialectical integration between our subjective, phenomenal and objective, noumenal worlds -- then we bypass the Kantian Epistemological Crisis that had seemingly every philosopher around his time having anxiety attacks because according to Kant 'knowledge of our objective, noumenal world' was impossible. Kant in effect had created a dualistic epistemological barrier that became in effect, an unbeatable epistemological monster.
In trying to modify the extreme empiricism of David Hume, Kant took epistemology to an even worse place than David Hume. Philosophers were bedazzled and befuddled by the skeptical extremism of David Hume; they were terrified by the implications of the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.
Philosophy, even to this day, has not fully recovered from the dualistic -- 'never the two should meet' -- epistemology of Kant. In the Post-Hegelian, Dialectical Philosophy of yours truly here, man's subjective and objective worlds meet all the time -- with both good and bad results -- the latter like when a Siberian tiger allegedly jumps a huge moat and massive fence at a zoo (unless it found another way out) -- and kills at least one person in the process, seriously injuring two others.
The most dangerous part of our own phenomenal, subjective world is our own private assumptions on what can and can't happen in the real, objective, noumenal world around us. False assumptions, generalizations, inferences, interpretations...can kill us...and/or others. We need to continually upgrade and update our epistemological structures and processes -- like I am this essay -- in order to keep our ideas, our concepts, our work...fresh, in tune with our objective-(noumenal) world and relevant.
Our very survival is dependent on us subscribing to this most important epistemological theme. The better our knowledge is -- i.e., the more structurally similar it is to the objective, noumenal world that we live in -- the better is our chance for a longer and more fruitful survival. I follow Ayn Rand's philosophy and Epistemology of 'Objectivism' here -- as well as Alfred Korzybski's philosophy of General Semantics. We will talk more about this at a later date.
Good epistemology involves a constant dialectic exchange between our subjective, phenomeanl world and our objective-noumenal one in a way that is not harmful to our very existence. The whole point of knowledge is to ward off dangers before they hit us and hurt us. Good epistemology is vitally important to our survival.
Kant's black and white-either/or epistemology has been pushed aside by DGB Philosophy for other subjectively interpreted 'better' brands of epistemology (Korzybski, Hayakawa, Rand...in my opinion).
This does not mean that Kant's work was not important; indeed, it was. 'The Critique of Pure Reason' was one of the two or three most revolutionary books in the history of Western philosophy. It stimulated philosophers to look inward at the scope and quality of man's 'internal, subjective perceptual-interpretive-evaluative machinery'. But in doing this, Kant overstated his case, even though it was supposed to be an integration of 'rational' and 'empirical' points of view. And at first, the philosophers of the time didn't know how to deal with this overstatement -- until the overcompensating 'anti-thesis' philosophies started rolling in -- Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer -- that all in their own way tended to re-emphasize a Spinozian-like monistic (wholistic) world.
Hegel's was the best of the three post-Kantian philosophies because it trumpeted the idea of a 'dualistic-dialectic-wholism' -- a constantly evolving integration between monism (wholism) and dualism -- that still monistically resulted in Hegel's idealistic dream of a 'one in all' philosophy that unfortunately, wove itself eventually when combined with other major influences (too many to get into here but let's start with Fichte, Nietzsche, a cultural compensation to being humiliated by Napoleon, cultural anti-Semitism, cultural egotism and Nationalism, Hitler...) -- into 'Nazism'. I don't think Hegel would have supported Nazism but who knows for sure; certainly, Nietzsche wouldn't have and didn't -- he was against German Nationalism and the 'herd mentality'.
Anyways -- it's not that we can't 'know' our 'objective, noumenal world' -- because we can. Rather, we can never 'know' our objective, noumenal world -- perfectly -- because of the limitations of our subjective sensory and our logical-evaluative machinery is not perfect; in fact, partly gets worse with age.
Even as I read what I have written here, I am squinting without having a set of reading glasses on. Twenty years ago this would not have been the case. At one time I had 20/20 vision. Not now. My senses are now more limited and imperfect than they were 20 years ago. But I can still read what I've written -- give or take a few spelling mistakes when I don't have my glasses on.
So my philosphical perspective relative to Kant's epistemology is basically this: Kant 'struck out' on the basis of overstatement.
And anyone who believes the full extent of Kant's overstatement is 'striking out' too because they are missing the imporance of 'dialectic interaction' and 'the importance of accurate subjective representation' of 'objective-noumenal truth'.
"Mr. Kant, you were brilliant but you were also too much of an 'anal-retentive, perfectionist' for your own good and for the good of those around you -- who took you too literally and too much to heart for their own good."
Our objective, nomenal world does not demand that we are perfect. It simply demands that we are more right than wrong -- particularly on the important things that could/can cost us our lives if we are wrong.
That is why God/Nature gave us the subjective, sensory-logical-evaluative machinery that we have. To understand our objective-noumenal world reasonably accurately if not perfectly -- because that is what keeps us alive.
dgb, Dec. 27-28th, 2007, updated Aug. 9th, 2008.
See...DGB Philosophy: German Idealism
