[lit-ideas] Re: Beg to differ, say, about fractals

  • From: "Walter C. Okshevsky" <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, John Wager <jwager@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sun, 24 Oct 2010 14:17:50 -0230

I don't think Kant's metaphysics would allow for an exemption for human
self-knowledge here. Our knowledge of ourselves, in both our epistemic and
moral capacities, remains bounded by the forms of intuition, categories of
understanding and idea of freedom. As such, this knowledge does not extend to
our "an sich" nature. Rather, the closest we can get to cognizing such a nature
is through the Faculties of understanding and reason that identify for us the
necessary presuppositions of our epistemic and moral activities. And once we
have understood such presuppositions, the question of our an sich nature
becomes otiose, so The Master claims.

Zum beispiel:  A creature who cannot but act under the presupposition of freedom
of the will is in the same ontological position as a creature who is really, in
its very an sichness, free. Or as Heidegger (him again) puts it: The being of
Dasein does not exist independently of its understanding of (its) being. Here,
there is no possibility of being "mistaken." Thus are we as we understand
ourselves to be.

Walter O
MUN

P.S. Homework assignment: But what if we were to say that it is part of our an
sich nature not to be able to know our an sich nature? 


Quoting John Wager <jwager@xxxxxxxxxx>:

> Eric Yost wrote:
> > From a Kantian perspective I suppose you're right. We can never know 
> > the thing in itself, only our own light.
> Ahh, but we also "are" something; "our own light" is part of us, not 
> part of the external thing, but part of the selbst an sich, or some such 
> Germanic construction.
> 
> We are always more than we can know about ourselves, but we still are 
> ourselves, not a thing observed or constructed.
> 
> 
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