Kant

The moment was all, the moment was enough. – Virginia Woolf Good things make choices difficult, bad things leave no choice. – Michelle Cohen Corasanti, The Almond Tree LOTR text internet archive Evil fucks up because evil people fundamentally cannot imagine that others are not motivated by the same things as them. Evil is its own undoing. Tolkein makes it clear that while Evil betrays its own purpose it is not self defeating. Good must still struggle and sacrifice in order to pvercome Evil at great cost. ...

最近在看康德 Kant的第一批判，然后碰巧看到诗人奥登 Auden写于1954年关于《魔戒》LOTR第一部的评论。 To present the conflict between Good and Evil as a war in which the good side is ultimately victorious is a ticklish business. Our historical experience tells us that physical power and, to a large extent, mental power are morally neutral and effectively real: wars are won by the stronger side, just or unjust. At the same time most of us believe that the essence of the Good is love and freedom so that Good cannot impose itself by force without ceasing to be good. ...

故城的春天看树，远处朦胧新绿，烟雨濛濛。新城的春天听鸟，后院短唱低鸣，下雪如雨。 费明: 读那些世界上人人传诵的脍炙人口的经典：87版《红楼梦》36集，每集45分钟，共计1620分钟，有名有姓的人物同样有六十多口子，在177分钟的《教父》影片风靡的上百个国家中，有几个国家曾上演悲金悼玉的红楼梦？ 老杨说红楼 《父亲的草原母亲的河》听了不下百遍，常常听的泪流满面。为云飞的歌喉，为席慕容的乡情。更为了不起的神来之笔“河水在传唱着祖先的祝福，保佑漂泊的孩子找到回家的路。” Dan Robinson Oxford Lectures on Kant’s first critique of pure reason Dan Robinson, Oxford “On the Limits of Sensibility and Reason” What is the question? The question is, how far our knowledge can reach? The extent to which we can rely on our senses, and the extent to which we can rely on reason. Kant recognizes that the ultimate arbiter in matters of this kind has always been human rationality, but no one has taken the time to test the measuring instrument. That is, if the gold standard for whether an argument succeeds or not is rationality itself, one has to assess the instrument. How good a thermometer is it? ...

20251226 After Christmas, Gold price had another record of US$4,556/ounce. Then it retreated back to US$4,300 on 12/29. Sliver had the same trajetory, $78 on 12/26 and down to $72 on 12/29. At the same time Bitcoi is around the level of US$87K. 20251210 as expected, Fed cut rate 0.25&, with a 9-3 vote. at the same time, resume purchasing Treasury securities, starting with a $40B purchase. the response of market is just ok because it’s already priced it in. both gold and oil around the same level, crypto down below 90k. in the end, the concern is still about inflation and the economy growth. 20251209 Many countries will kepp the rate unchanged. will fed cut the rate in December in the coming Wednesday? Bitcoin jumps 4,000 to more than $94,300. Oil price slides 1% to about $58.2. gold price up a bit above $4,200. the global bond selloff paused on Tuesday 12/09. all indexes are up. so if the rate cut has already been priced in the stock market, unchanged rate and easing pause will definitely upset the market a bit. if there would be .25 cut, the rally would continue. ...

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.” ...