/lit/ - Literature

I have mostly occult stuff but I'll post whatever tangentially related to phil.

>>22054732
>>22054732
I'll give a quick and dirty rundown.

Kant was prompted by (among many others reasons) an appreciation of Newtonian science and its disturbance by Humean skepticism. Newton sidestepped the scientific controversies of the day ("What is really going on here?" etc.) by simply observing phenomena and then creating mathematical models to match what he observed ("I offer no hypotheses."). Hume threatened to overturn the scientific enterprise with the problem of induction, i.e. the fact that we presuppose causality in making observations. Kant, in turn, devises a grand epistemic system that rescues Newtonian science by relegating space and time as the sensible intuitions which both limit and ground knowledge, and (this is often missed) that these intuitions were mathematical in character in order to preserve validity in them (the latent metaphysics inherent in Kant's CPR). Space, of course, has a Euclidean geometric quality. And time, as a succession of moments, has an "arithmetic" quality. Combine the two together, and we have the Newtonian sandbox of motion in absolute coordinate space and absolute time. However, when it comes to making sense of causation, Kant reasons that time is more fundamental than space because, well, there's an internal and external aspect of time. When Kant organizes the schema behind the transcendental aesthetic (i.e., the categories/judgments/etc. "boxes" that experience is filtered through to produce knowledge), time is seen as the defining thread linking the subject and object all together. You can read more about the schema here:
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schema_(Kant)

Unfortunately, that's all thrown in the dustbin because advances in 19th and 20th century mathematics and natural science utterly annihilated much of the Kantian assumptions about the nature of space, time, etc. Forget about Euclidean intuitions of space when the nature of space seems to be non-Euclidean. And not even time is salvaged considering the nature of general relativity, which separates time and motion as distinct properties (the faster you go, the slower your internal clock "ticks", etc.). I won't even get started on quantum mechanics. There are Neo-Kantians who argue that the structure of the transcendental aesthetic can be preserved, but they don't understand that it's a folly pursuit given what Kant was trying to do with the CPR, which is to provide a foundation and a limitation to reason. The whole building is condemned and needs to be torn down and rebuilt anew if the goal was to live in a home with dignity and not to simply reside in eternal squalor. And in order to do that, we have to return to the history of categorical thinking, just like Kant did, but armed with new insights from science.

>>21972019
I see your point, but it's worth pointing out that logic is prior to causality, and causality implies a certain kind of existential relation with time. And also, if it's beyond logic, then it wouldn't be comprehensible at all.

>>21933793
Spinozachads, how exactly is Spinoza "anti-teleology", especially in comparison to Aristotle? I know that there tends to be two usages of the "final cause" concept:
>the intrinsic tendency of an entity to become something and thus become its "best" self
>the overarching unity of the cosmos heading towards some goal
Can't conatus fulfill the telos of an entity in the first sense? And if everything is determined by a chain of cause-and-effect, then couldn't a cosmological telos be ascertained by contemplating the final outcome of causality?

On that note, I'm a little bit confused where Spinoza is perceived as "anti-Aristotelian." While the Scholastics may have vehemently disagreed with him, it seems like Spinoza and Aristotle have a ton of common ground. Maybe that's where I'm getting confused about Spinoza's rejection of "teleology"—maybe what's really meant is that he rejected organized religion.

>>20760326
There's no distinction between good philosophy and esotericism. Every philosopher worth their salt was an esotericist. Here's a 110 page appendix so you can be irrecoverably BTFO forever
https://press.uchicago.edu/sites/melzer/melzer_appendix.pdf

>Aristotle had 10 categories
>Plotinus had 5 categories
>Kant had 12 categories AND 12 judgments (wtf? where did they come in?) and dropped substance/essence/etc.
>Hegel had his famous triad
>Peirce remade the triad and did everything in triads?
wtf were these niggas doing? also, what would be the category for revelatory knowledge?

Is reading Aristotle's Organon necessary to understand Critique of Pure Reason or just helpful?

I want to start reading Kant. Where should I start and in what order should I read? Is there a Kant chart?

Can someone help a brainlet understand the second analogy of experience in the first critique?

Why does our being able to order our perceptions in time according to the order of phenomena in the object as opposed to our own perceptions of it mean that this ordering carries the weight of necessity?

Why can't it just be that we're habituated to cognize some events in time as occurring before others in regular patterns by habit, and we use this as a heuristic to so order them, without attributing any necessity to this ordering?

Help please, thank you!

>Coffee must be brought ‘upon the spot,’ (a word he had constantly in his mouth during his latter days,) ‘in a moment.’
>And the expressions of his impatience, though from old habit still gentle, were so lively, and had so much of infantine naïveté about them, that none of us could forbear smiling. Knowing what would happen, I had taken care that all the preparations should be made beforehand; the coffee was ground; the water was boiling; and the very moment the word was given, his servant shot in like an arrow, and plunged the coffee into the water.
>All that remained, therefore, was to give it time to boil up. But this trifling delay seemed unendurable to Kant. All consolations were thrown away upon him: vary the formula as we might, he was never at a loss for a reply.
>If it was said—‘Dear Professor, the coffee will be brought up in a moment.'
>’Will be!’ he would say, ‘but there’s the rub, that it only will be:
Man never is, but always to be blest.’
>If another cried out—‘The coffee is coming immediately.’
>‘Yes,’ he would retort, ‘and so is the next hour: and, by the way, it’s about that length of time that I have waited for it.’ Then he would collect himself with a stoical air, and say—‘Well, one can die after all: it is but dying; and in the next world, thank God! there is no drinking of coffee, and consequently no—waiting for it.’
>Sometimes he would rise from his chair, open the door, and cry out with a feeble querulousness—‘Coffee! coffee!’ And when at length he heard the servant’s step upon the stairs, he would turn round to us, and, as joyfully as ever sailor from the mast-head, he would call out
>‘Land, land! my dear friends, I see land.’

- The Last Days of Immanuel Kant, Thomas de Quincey
(https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/…/last-days-of-immanuel-kant/)