Kant

Start to read the blog of Robert Paul wolff. Start to watch his lectures on Kant. video blog part 1 Reading the Critique Part I part 2 reading the Critique Part II part 3 reading the Critique Part III part 4 reading the Critique part IV part 5 reading the Critique part V part 6 reading the Critique part VI part 7 reading the Critique part VII part 8 reading the critique part VIII part 9 reading the Critique part IX From the wiki page: Kant builds on the work of empiricist philosophers such as John Locke and David Hume, as well as rationalist philosophers such as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Christian Wolff. He expounds new ideas on the nature of space and time, and tries to provide solutions to the skepticism of Hume regarding knowledge of the relation of cause and effect and that of René Descartes regarding knowledge of the external world. This is argued through the transcendental idealism of objects (as appearance) and their form of appearance. Kant regards the former “as mere representations and not as things in themselves”, and the latter as “only sensible forms of our intuition, but not determinations given for themselves or conditions of objects as things in themselves”. This grants the possibility of a priori knowledge, since objects as appearance “must conform to our cognition…which is to establish something about objects before they are given to us.” Knowledge independent of experience Kant calls “a priori” knowledge, while knowledge obtained through experience is termed “a posteriori”.[2] According to Kant, a proposition is a priori if it is necessary and universal. A proposition is necessary if it is not false in any case and so cannot be rejected; rejection is contradiction. A proposition is universal if it is true in all cases, and so does not admit of any exceptions. Knowledge gained a posteriori through the senses, Kant argues, never imparts absolute necessity and universality, because it is possible that we might encounter an exception. ...

Kant has four big questions for philosophy. What can I know? How should I act? For what can I hope? What is the human being? This writing has something to do with Kant’s last question. In the book of “Last Chance to See”, Douglas Adams told an anecdote about the Golden Pavilion Temple in Kyoto. “I remembered once, in Japan, having been to see the Gold Pavilion Temple in Kyoto and being mildly surprised at quite how well it had weathered the passage of time sicne it was first built in the fourteenth century. I was told it hadn’t weathered well at all, and had in fact been burnt to the ground twice in this century.” ...