Friday, February 12, 2016

On Immanuel Kant

http://www.economist.com/node/611077?fsrc=scn/fb/te/pe/ed/meetmrgreen

I know it's not the case, but I sometimes wish that I was named after this Emmanuel. His philosophy certainly influenced mine, from assumptions on human nature (ok, I was predisposed to agree with him) to areligious grounds for morality (to which I was not always predisposed). His intellectual honesty-- the son of a pastor, he set out to make a rational argument for faith but ended up being a father of agnosticism-- strongly appealed to me. Yet I do not place his philosophy on the pedestal of dogma; his theories are only regarded highly until they are falsified. He is not a fount of immutable truth, and the world is not always to be seen with Kantian lenses. Just as he would've wanted.

Bonus to find out that he might've been an Anglophile (I also am one, when I'm not being a Russophile).

No comments: