Why Ayn Rand Branded Immanuel Kant as Evil - EXPLAINED

This video was created by Christian Jackson. Taken from Yaron Brook Interviews: Your Happiness = Your Responsibility Recorded by the Scottish Libertarians in Edinburgh, Scotland on February 10, 2020.

#AynRand #ImmanuelKant #HistoryPhilosophy

[willieluncheonette]

" I am reminded of a great German philosopher, Immanuel Kant. He is a specimen of those people who are absolutely in the mind. He lived according to mind so totally that people used to set their watches, whenever they saw Immanuel Kant going to the university. Never — it may rain, it may rain fire, it may rain cats and dogs, it may be utterly cold, snow falling … Whatever the situation, Kant will reach the university at exactly the same time all the year round, even on holidays. Such a fixed, almost mechanical … He would go on holiday at exactly the same time, remain in the university library, which was specially kept open for him, because otherwise what would he do there the whole day? And he was a very prominent, well-known philosopher, and he would leave the university at exactly the same time every day.

One day it happened … It had rained and there was too much mud on the way — one of his shoes got stuck in the mud. He did not stop to take the shoe out because that would make him reach the university a few seconds later, and that was impossible. He left the shoe there. He just arrived with one shoe. The students could not believe it. Somebody asked, “What happened to the other shoe?”

He said, “It got stuck in the mud, so I left it there, knowing perfectly well nobody is going to steal one shoe. When I return in the evening, then I will pick it up. But I could not have been late.”

A woman proposed to him: “I want to be married to you” — a beautiful young woman. Perhaps no woman has ever received such an answer, before or after Immanuel Kant. Either you say, “Yes, ” or you say, “No. Excuse me.” Immanuel Kant said, “I will have to do a great deal of research.”

The woman asked, “About what?”

He said, “I will have to look in all the marriage manuals, all the books concerning marriage, and find out all the pros and cons — whether to marry or not to marry.”

The woman could not imagine that this kind of answer had ever been given to any woman before. Even no is acceptable, even yes, although you are getting into a misery, but it is acceptable. But this kind of indifferent attitude towards the woman — he did not say a single sweet word to her. He did not say anything about her beauty, his whole concern was his mind. He had to convince his mind whether or not marriage is logically the right thing.

It took him three years. It was really a long search. Day and night he was working on it, and he had found three hundred reasons against marriage and three hundred reasons for marriage. So the problem even after three years was the same.

One friend suggested out of compassion, “You wasted three years on this stupid research. In three years you would have experienced all these six hundred, without any research. You should have just said yes to that woman. There was no need to do so much hard work. Three years would have given you all the pros and cons — existentially, experientially.”

But Kant said, “I am in a fix. Both are equal, parallel, balanced. There is no way to choose.”

The friend suggested, “Of the pros you have forgotten one thing: that whenever there is a chance, it is better to say yes and go through the experience. That is one thing more in favor of the pros. The cons cannot give you any experience, and only experience has any validity.”

He understood, it was intellectually right. He immediately went to the woman’s house, knocked on her door. Her old father opened the door and said, “Young man, you are too late. You took too long in your research. My girl is married and has two children.” That was the last thing that was ever heard about his marriage. From then on no woman ever asked him, and he was not the kind of man to ask anybody. He remained unmarried."

[mikbang]

Kant quote: "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity (Unmündigkeit)." He argues that the immaturity is self-inflicted not from a lack of understanding, but from the lack of courage to use one's reason, intellect, and wisdom without the guidance of another. Kant argued that using one's reason is considered dangerous by most men and all women.[1] He exclaims that the motto of the Enlightenment is "Sapere aude"! – Dare to be wise! (wiki).

[matthewkopp]

This is completely inaccurate.

The difference between a phenomenon and a noumena is we can not perceive things completely in and of themselves so they are phenomenon.

This can easily be demonstrated by the fact that we can not perceive the entire light spectrum, nor hear the entire sound spectrum, or various other limitations on our senses.

So the noumena is experienced as phenomenon, as an a posteriori event of our limited senses, but we cannot experience entirely what something really is.

Noumena is of course an abstraction, but it points to the idea that the phenomenon is limitedly perceived and there is something more.

[michaelsieger]

Conflating noumena and reality is one of the most analytically sloppy blunders I’ve ever witnessed. The form cognition imposes on the content of sense-experience constitutes reality. The laws of reason which construct the world inhere within the subject, and therefore there is no definite ‘object’ or ‘objective correlate’ outside the subject. Kant’s point is not that there is a barrier between reason and reality, but that men can only apply reason and the tools of rational inquiry to their experience of the world. Propositions which make claims about objects outside the confines of man’s experience are invalid and self-contradictory. Kant’s philosophy is commonsensical, scientific and the absolute exemplification of Enlightenment thought. I’m sick of unlearned philistines like Yaron poisoning the well of philosophical discourse.

[connorbyers]

I disagree with Yaron’s assertion that Kant’s critique of Pure Reason logically gives us Hegel and the postmodernists, or rather that his thoughts on the noumena agree with Hegel’s Absolute Idealism. Hegel’s idealism acts as a REJECTION of Kant’s transcendental idealism, not a fulfilment of it. It may be said that it was necessary for Kant to get it wrong in order for Hegel to see it correctly; however that can’t really be verified.

[alexpacheco]

Man the army of Kant quotes In this comment section

[vaclavmiller]

This is the most superficial critique of Kant I've ever heard. You clearly have never read, let alone understood, any of the primary texts.

[mariog]

This is so wrong. The sciences are nominalistic in nature. One of the dogmas in science is Ockham’s razor.

[atothetop]

So basically her issue is that she doesn’t understand Kant

[honestone]

How can a man that teaches about respecting everyone and treating everyone good be EVIL🤔

[RubenWalsh-ivik]

Sad to see men, endowed with a spirit and a soul, living only in the mud of this existance. So much debate matters not when you encounter your Maker. For Good is transcendant, for if it wasn't, then all is permisible.

[MrGadfly]

I marvel at the simplistic mind of Randians.

[aleidius]

"Immanuel Kant was a real pissant who was very rarely stable!"

[jarrodyuki]

in this there are winners and losers and if kants theory is approved, it would destroy all motivation to succeed. burn his books and destroy his grave.

[Shemdoupe]

If you think that your philosophy doesn't rely on faith then you are blind. All philosophies rely on faith. This is the great failure of objectivism and other purely rationalist philosophies.

[jarrodyuki]

reason is the only thing that can give us hope or at least a bittersweet cookie in all the chaos and suffering. same with utopian socialism and orthodox Christianity and the pursuit of happiness. kant fyodor and schopenhauer destroy all three things that are vital to our survival as poor people and as basic beings. as entities.

[mikbang]

Consider Rationally: Objectivism baits with the same word "Happiness" used by Scientology or any pandering pop-psychology movement: Instead of the the slick "You Can Be HAPPY in 3 easy steps!" pandered by Motivational speakers, Rand poaches slogans from Philosophy. Aristotle's Eudaimonia being the her cornerstone. (Now, if one wants to do childishly simplistic timelines showing "the evils of Kant ideas through the ages" one could equally use Aristotle himself, instructor of Alexander the Great, and show how such "dangerous ideas" led to Hellenist Imperialism). Stick with attacking Marx, Ayn. You both were birds of a feather, opposite sides of the same coin, but shared the same Epistemology and Worldview. One collective, one not. That's all.

[mikbang]

If you love Math. And debating Space and Time phenomenon, you will like Kant. Might disagree. Might side with the Mathematical Realists vs the Formalists or Fictionalists. But at least you will understand the subject. Stick with Rand? you will have a nice sprinkling of Aristotle circa 300 bc and the crudest of modern materialism. The Rational Choice is..yours! (unless you study cognitive science and genetics and it might then be the choice is biologically pre-determined....LOL)

[ambrosia]

The tree of the KNOWLEDGE of good and evil... interesting that it is called that... KNOWLEDGE puffs up

[kit]

Sounds like a consequentialist critique of Kant. Consequentialism itself has well-known critiques.