[lit-ideas] Re: The Final Finger of Fate
- From: Chris Bruce <bruce@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2006 19:45:51 +0200
On 16. Sep 2006, at 17:31, Mike Geary wrote:
I don't see how randomness or chance could possibly exist and there
still be a universe. What seems to us chaos and open-endedness is
merely the almost infinite variables that go into every equation. If
one knew the position and momentum of every particle of existence at
that first moment of existence then one could know the future. Then
one might be able to affect the future. Failing that we have to live
with the illusion that the world is open to our control.
Illusion? No no no, my dear Michael!
As our dearly beloved Kant taught us, the seeming 'freedom-determinism'
impasse evidenced in the third antinomy of his Critique of Pure Reason
must be *acknowledged*, yet *overcome* by the correct use of our
*practical* reason; so that in the end we are able to stand with Kant
in wonder of both the starry skies (whose behaviour is undeniably and
inevitably determined by the laws of physics) above us and the moral
law (which enables us to determine the correct moral choices among the
actions allowed by our equally undeniable and inevitable freedom)
within us.
This 'acknowledging and overcoming' is wonderfully captured in the
German verb 'aufheben', which - peculiarly, yet oh so fortunately for
the development of German philosophy - has connotations of both
'preservation' and 'abolition', but which has, unfortunately, no
corresponding single-word term in the English language.
This 'peculiarity' of German philosophy reaches its zenith in the
encyclopedic dialectic of the lordly and masterly Hegel - the straps of
whose intellectual apparatus so few of us are worthy to loose, and who
has, therefore, so few worthwhile expositors.
Chris Bruce
Kiel, Germany
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