by hilzoy
Via Lawyers, Guns, and Money, Chris Muir takes a stab at intellectual history:
and the next day:
Apparently, ‘later’ in this last one used to read ‘Locke’, but someone clued Muir in to the fact that Locke was, in fact, Christian, and based his theory of property on our duties to God. But that, of course, isn’t the real howler, nor is the bizarre idea that this country was in any serious way “based on” Kant, let alone Schopenhauer, who was just one year old when the Constitution was adopted. What actually makes my head explode is this:
Yeeeaaarghh!!!
The usual complaint about Kant is that he was too inflexible. (He thought, for instance, that if a murderer comes to the door and asks where to find the person he wants to kill, it’s wrong to lie.) To call him a nihilist, or a relativist, or someone who doesn’t believe in objective truth, is like — well, one of LG&M’s analogies is “command economy Hayekianism”. Since truth is one but error is infinite, there’s no shortage of further subjects for Chris Muir’s strips: Leninist anarchism, Kierkegaardian rationalism, Thomist atheism, Nazi Judaism, cautious and sober Maoism, Britney Spearsian profundity, Caligulan propriety and decency, Robespierrian restraint, Mozartian lugubriousness, and of course Muirian thoughtful, well-informed commentary.
Commenters at LG&M googled the phrase ‘Kantian nihilism, and found that most of the pages using it had gotten it from Ayn Rand. See, for instance, here:
“Among noted thinkers of the day, Ayn Rand alone stood firm against the tide of Kantian nihilism and in support of reason, individualism, and laissez-faire capitalism – the philosophic ideals that are the foundation of American achievement and progress. Three decades later, despite a seemingly different sociopolitical climate, the intellectual essence of the “New Left” endures. Its continued influence – manifested in such ideologies as environmentalism and multiculturalism – renders Rand’s observations and warnings as relevant, and as urgently needed, as when they were first written.”
And here:
“Another case in point was the behavior of the crowds at Woodstock (I will admit that I liked the music and the movie) which, she said, served as a definitive paradigm of Kantian Nihilism; prevalent were wild sex orgies among strangers, drug overdoses, continual wallowings in mud and feces, riotous behavior resulting in varying levels of destruction to others’ property (thus property rights), and the need for food and water by those who ended up starving and dehydrated because they did not plan ahead and consider potential troubles that could and would lie ahead, all of which, figuratively speaking, amassed one big festival of animals ready to be sacrificed to the gods of Nihilism.”
Because we all know how firmly Kant supported wild sex orgies, continual wallowings in mud and feces, and not needing food and water.
Note to Chris Muir: it’s fine not to know anything about Kant. Most of humanity doesn’t know anything about him, and that’s OK. But if you don’t know anything about him, why pretend that you do? Note to world: Ayn Rand is not a reliable guide to anything the history of philosophy. Note to self: time to go pick up those pieces of my head.
I thought Emmanuel Kant was a real pissant who was very rarely stable.
Sounds like a nihilist to me 🙂
I suppose I could see a dogmatist’s arguing that Kant is a nihilist because he denies the possibility of ultimate knowledge of free will, immortality, etc.
You just have to come at Kant from a *much* more dogmatic frame of mind than most of us are accustomed to. Imagine yourself, say, a Jesuit in the year 1816?
Not that Muir isn’t an Objectivist dumbass, of course. A Jesuit in the year 1816 would probably find the bikini-clad redhead an example of Kantian nihilism.
(Recycled from my LGM comment.)
Good name for a band, though. I like Hilzoy’s logo.
there must be at least one band out there called “The Nihilists” already, if only as a Big Lebowski reference.
Well, I knew there was some relationship between philosophy and current events.
Reading those cartoons is like stepping into a dissociative mind. Schopenhauer and the New York Times?
Anderson: he denies the possibility of what he would call theoretical knowledge of free will and immortality — i.e., knowledge based on experience, or on its necessary structure. But he also says that the moral law reveals our freedom, immortality, and the existence of God.
Usually Chris Muir just makes me go WTF?, but this time he actually got a laugh out of me. Not the laugh he was looking for, admittedly, but a laugh. Because *of course* a woman’s butt is such an appropriate way to point out that someone is “behind the times”! Not to mention the Kantian nihilism explanation, which is just comedy gold.
Sorry about your exploded head, hil, but sometimes that’s the price of comedy.
“…one of LG&M’s analogies….”
I’m surely a dope, but who? What? Possibly you’re term of arting here?
Oh I dunno, I’d say there’s a certain quality, a certain je ne sais quoi, that all those phrases capture rather well.
As a former graphic designer, the thing that struck me about those panels was the deeply ambiguous (and therefore ad-like) representation of sexuality. Muir could make a killing as a commercial illustrator for condom boxes I think. So are those two characters married, or long-time lovers? Is the guy gay? If he’s not gay and they’re not bored with each other then why is he masturbating while the woman is trying to get his attention? Or is he some sort of casanova, for whose attentions all the ladies must compete?
Ah, you earlier referred to “Lawyers, Guns, and Money.”
Sorry.
Lawyers, Guns & Money, Gary.
too late. danged dial-up…
Like many over-intellectual teenagers, I read all of Ayn Rand’s books at that age. Now when I see a young person reading Atlas Shrugged or the Fountainhead, I try to think of some way of getting it away from them. This is by way of saying it’s been a long time since I read them. But if I remember correctly, she refers to Kant as “the philosopher of death” at least once. (tangentially: I am grateful to her for introducing me to Vermeer, although the thing she thought was Vermeer’s great flaw–his depicting the mundane and everyday–has always been one of my favorite things about his art. She also, if I remember correctly, saw Zola as the embodiment of everything wrong in art, with a metaphysics and epistemology of pure, unrelieved evil(!) I was reminded by that when seeing that Anthony Bourdain recommended one of Zola’s novels for its description of the Paris markets.)
Wasn’t Ayn Rand a reliable guide to wild sex orgies, I mean, as long as she took the other participants on one at a time and not collectively?
I think Anthony Bourdain and Ayn Rand would get along famously … especially during orgies.
In the summer of ’78, “Send Lawyers, Guns, And Money” was our refrain.
Just a joke. But an empowering one.
Anderson: he denies the possibility of what he would call theoretical knowledge of free will and immortality — i.e., knowledge based on experience, or on its necessary structure. But he also says that the moral law reveals our freedom, immortality, and the existence of God.
Sure, and our Jesuit might actually buy that, suitably theologized. (Shouldn’t pick on the Jesuits–reading too much Stendhal, I guess.) (Tho I think the RCC position is still that the existence of God is indeed provable from experience and logic w/out “limiting reason to make room for faith.”)
But I don’t think it’s obviously silly to equate “knowledge” with the theoretical knowledge addressed in the 1st Critique, and to construe the “postulates” of the 2d Critique as an inadequate substitute for said knowledge.
On the lighter side, Kant at Woodstock would probably make for some interesting stories…
hey, come on. Someone had to speak out against the evil of Kantian nihilism.
Next up: stern denunciations of Darwinian creationism, Pyrrhonian dogmatism, Marxist capitalism, and Berkeleyan materialism.
while “lawyers, guns & money” has a better beat, we laywers pretty much insist on the order being “guns, money & lawyers”.
whoever wrote “the pen is mightier than the sword” never tried to outshoot an AK-47 with a writ of attainder. i’ll wait for the shooting to stop, thanks very much.
and speaking of lawyers, glenn greenwald is getting a lot of blogging today.
Muir is a moron. He’s trying so hard to be the wingnut answer to Doonesbury, I almost want to pat him on the head and gently praise him, like I would a child who’d just presented me with the latest way he’s randomly crammed four Lego bricks together and called it an Aircraft carrier.
The problem is that he just really isn’t funny. Lacking Trudeau’s subtlety and humor, his strips read like Republican Chick tracts, reeking of author voice and pseudo-intellectualism. They’re right wing blog screeds with pictures.
Pyrrhonian dogmatism
Well, who *sez* we can’t know? Huh?Sapere aude!
–Oops, more nihilism … Kantian? or Horatian?
radish:
Also, notice how in the two strips the man is in exactly the same position, and appears to be talking to the woman over his shoulder — as though he’s turned his back on her writhings. You’re right that it would make a pretty good ad, in the “WTF is going on here? sex, I guess” genre.
I thought Mallard Fillmore was the Right’s answer to Doonesbury?
Mallard Fillmore is actually funny every couple of weeks, which makes it a masterpiece compared to that Muir thing.
Can we somehow legislate that you can’t go around damning things according to their perceived relationship with philosophers you have never read? I overheard someone the other day talking about Spinoza in terms that made it clear she was talking about Deleuze talking about Spinoza and wouldn’t know Spinoza from a yucca root. Why doesn’t someone stop these people? Kant has books readily available in the library, and the letters do form readable words.
And besides, wouldn’t the Founding Fathers have been more influenced by Hume?
Atheist Thomism? Anthony Kenny‘s an agnostic Thomist. close enough?
Kant has books readily available in the library, and the letters do form readable words.
The same has been said of Hegel, but I’m not sure what happens to the words when they’re formed into sentences …
“Selbstverschuldete Unmuendigkeit” indeed. Oh well.
Yeah, Anderson. From my experience, even self-identified Hegelians only talk about Hegel in the terms of other people who’ve written about Hegel.
Actually it is appropriate to refer to “Kantian nihilism.” The first philosopher to use the term “nihilism” (Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi) used it in a reductio argument as being the result of Kant’s transcendental philosophy. However, I don’t know if Jacobi’s arguments against Kant are what Muir is trying to reference here.
we laywers pretty much insist on the order being “guns, money & lawyers”.
But there’s a method to that madness, Francis. 😉
Joshua’s got it right–you have to steep yourself in a *really* reactionary worldview to appreciate “Kantian nihilism.”
Sorry to keep commenting piecemeal, but this leapt out at me in the Stanford article that Joshua linked:
In our own times, Leo Strauss did his PhD on Jacobi.
Enough said! 😉
Sounds like Rand thought the problem with Woodstock was that the public health regulations were inadequate.
OK: Jacobi gets a pass on this one, being brilliant. But his reading of Kant was, let’s say, eccentric. And what are the odds that Muir was relying on his knowledge of Jacobi, given the rest of what he said about Kant?
“The problem is that he just really isn’t funny.”
Funny is subjective, and not declarative or ideological or objective.
I mostly disagree with him, but I find him funny some percentage of the time. Much of the times, boring. Many times, wrong.
Basically, declaring any given person or subject “funny” or not doesn’t tend to be well grounded. There’s no objective grounding in “funny,” I repeat.
Claims otherwise: funny.
And, mostly, denouncing “funny” isn’t pretty, and tends to be rorschachy.
Getting worked up over cartoons: generally silly and ugly.
But it’s all subjective. Which is the point.
Gary Farber: objectively anti-subjectivity.
Gary Farber: objectively anti-subjectivity.
My darkest suspicions are realized.
And what are the odds that Muir was relying on his knowledge of Jacobi, given the rest of what he said about Kant?
Oh, doubtless he was regurgitating Randianism. It’s just that “Kantian nihilism” is such an endearingly hopeless phrase, one feels inspired to tinker with it and make it work, like a rusted lawnmower somebody’s left on the curb to be trashed.
Andreson: point taken. Now try to rehabilitate ‘Britney Spearsian profundity’.
Gary, I know what you mean, but maybe the argument against the funny here is that one shouldn’t have to be ideologically aligned with someone to even remotely titter at the jokes. There is plenty of right-wing humor that is funny, but these are comics that require the reader to be sexist, ignorant, AND right-wing to laugh at. “I Kant”? “Behind the times”? I’m sure, like you, that someone is laughing at this, but only given extremely strictly-defined conditions of partisanship, sexism, and pseudo-intellectual poseurism.
“Gary Farber: objectively anti-subjectivity.”
One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them all.
In the darkness, we will bind you.
(Man, it’s hot; could we please have some darkness?)
‘Britney Spearsian profundity’ –
I always call my cousin because we’re so close. We’re almost like sisters, and we’re also close because our moms are sisters.
I always listen to ‘NSYNC’s Tearin’ Up My Heart. It reminds me to wear a bra.
I performed at Mom and Dad’s party when I was four. Oh my gosh, I was singing a Madonna song and I peed myself.
profund. no ?
profundity === great depth
Britney Spearsian profundity == pop stars with (monty python ref.) vast tracts of land.
i have a vague memory of a standup routine by a comedienne about the size of women’s breasts. her point was that while men perceive that the larger a woman’s breasts the stupider she is, in fact, the larger a woman’s breasts the stupider the men get.
Britney Spears profundity == the genius of a woman who has no apparent talent to make the men who see her so stupid as to make her enormously wealthy.
so, hil, how did i do?
“There is plenty of right-wing humor that is funny, but these are comics…”
Well, didn’t say a word about the two strips in question, y’know. Not a word. Sigh. Wasn’t my topic. Didn’t address it. Etc.
I really need to buy a hat that says “and as I digress,” or something.
I’d think everyone would notice, by now, that that’s what I do, but, no, that’s my fault.
As I digressed….
pop stars with (monty python ref.) vast tracts of land.
I did not have implants, I just had a growth spurt.
-B. Spears
Funny is subjective, and not declarative or ideological or objective.
Whereas pedantry is typically tedious and not especially helpful.
Basically, declaring any given person or subject “funny” or not doesn’t tend to be well grounded.
Next up: Gary explains how declaring any given person or subject “obnoxious” or not isn’t well grounded because everyone’s definition of obnoxious is subjective. IOW: true, but also irrelevant.
Gary, in seriousness: I find your habit of zeroing in on the low hanging fruit in people’s comments and offering pedantic criticisms on small elements that are largely irrelevant to the whole of their comment /incredibly/ obnoxious and disruptive. You might think you’re offering some kind of unique insight, but from my end it comes across like replying to someone who says the sun is going down with “actually, the earth is orbiting the sun”.
Of /course/ “funny” is subjective. But there are aspects of humorous material that contribute to its humor value that are less so. If you’d looked beyond the single sentence of mine that you quoted, you might’ve even stumbled across specific issues with his writing style that I pointed out.
Britney Spearsian profundity rehabilated (via Bookslut)
what are the odds that Muir was relying on his knowledge of Jacobi, given the rest of what he said about Kant?
The connection’s pretty easy for the layman to stumble upon, actually.
Kant -> Nebular Hypothesis -> heavy metal -> Def Leppard -> Rock of Ages -> Gunter glieben glauchen glauben -> Faith -> Jacobi
Bookslut *rules*, btw. Bookmark the blog if you haven’t. Michael Schaub makes me laugh out loud at least once a week. (See Farber caveats above.)
Also, OTB commenters work themselves into a tizzy over the correct spelling of Ockham/Occam … a nominalist. Pretty funny, as philosophical humor goes … (see above).
“Gary, in seriousness: I find your habit of zeroing in on the low hanging fruit in people’s comments and offering pedantic criticisms on small elements that are largely irrelevant to the whole of their comment /incredibly/ obnoxious and disruptive.”
Well, sorry about that. To an extent. I certainly don’t mean to be disruptive, but I’m als not going to be able to ever stop noting that which I note. I don’t want it to be at all obnoxious, but if that’s the general feeling, I’ll leave.
I’m sorry you don’t like it, but I grew up in a way where folks mostly exchanged that sort of stuff as mutual amusement. I’m sorry that it doesn’t work for you that way.
Beyond that, well, I’m easily persuadable at present that I suck.
So, “the will to power” determines the “categorical imperative” ?
“Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it would become a universal law”, since “there is nothing left of Being as such”?
Sounds like fun!
John: I am dazzled.
And who knew Britney Spears had a website? And why did she misspell Tyger?
Catsy, Gary, group hug, okay?
Yes, Gary can be pedantic. (Probably moreso when he’s blue?)
But no one is forcing Catsy to read any pedantic comments by Gary … right?
Catsy: …but from my end it comes across like replying to someone who says the sun is going down with “actually, the earth is orbiting the sun”.
Actually, the earth is rotating. *ducks*
Gary Farber: Beyond that, well, I’m easily persuadable at present that I suck.
Of course, suckiness is subjective…
Well of course you suck, but then you’re in good company. Some of us suck more than others, but I try to keep my personal life out of the discussion most of the time. 😉
And can you be annoying? Well of course. But that is part of why you fit in here. The real question is, do you add to the conversation more than you detract from it. Usually, yes. So stick around.
On a more general note, lets all take a deep breath.
…
…
…
Was that cleansing for you? Me neither.
That tiger pictue reminds me of the bit from _Grizzly Man_ where Herzog says, over the film of a grizzly’s face, “I believe the common character of the universe is not harmony, but hostility, chaos and murder . . . this blank stare shows only the half-bored interest in food.” -> ” . . . the half-bored interest in hearing `Oops I Did It Again’ yet one more time . . . ”
The real question is, do you add to the conversation more than you detract from it. Usually, yes. So stick around.
wait, that’s a rule – i have to contribute more than i detract ?
rats.
I should probably note that my exasperation with Gary was not a plea for him to leave, but rather that he try really hard to stop doing the aforementioned annoying things.
Well the real question is why do I so often ask questions yet still end the sentence with a period.
But that is a different problem.
“I should probably note that my exasperation with Gary was not a plea for him to leave, but rather that he try really hard to stop doing the aforementioned annoying things.”
My life tends to be one long extention of wishing I knew how to be less annoying, without completely suppressing my personality, frankly.
I’m fascinated by digressive points. There it is. I see it, I’m fascinated. I want to talk about it.
I have a long list of other annoying qualities, which I decline to bring up at the moment.
This is, incidentally, pretty much why Andrew and I stopped talking for about a year and a half or more.
Ooh, thunderstorm gathering here. I lurve thunderstorms.
Some people hate the thunder and lightning. I love it.
In about two minutes, the sun went out, the wind is sweeping, and the thunder is roaring. It sweeps, the wind does.
I adore it.
The sky is loud. The weather thingie on my blog suddenly rises and says “severe weather alert!”
I hadn’t noticed.
And the hail will come in seconds.
See, these strips, for me, provide a rubber-meets-the-road kind of moment, one which I’ve also been experiencing at lost of different blogs.
Either the person in question actually, truly believes, in their heart of hearts, that the New York Times and its publisher and editors are genuinely indifferent as to the whether the US is a liberal (in the classical sense of the term) democratic republic or a theocratic fundamentalist Islamic state, in which case said person is a raving lunatic; or he or she truly does not believe it, but will repeatedly and slanderously say so for political effect, in which case said person is not only a raving lunatic, but perniciously evil. There’s not, really, a middle ground there.
Ockham/Occam … a nominalist.
Now that is objectively funny (though I should mention that there is no way would I have realized it was funny without the generous assistance of folks more learned than myself.)
Well the real question is why do I so often ask questions yet still end the sentence with a period.
Sebastian, why do you do that. Is it that you don’t really want an answer, or something else perhaps.
Gary, re whether your pedantry is excessive, I agree that it can be irritating, but I personally just as soon you err on the side of pedantry, in order to reduce the chance that you might decide not to share some relevant factual observation for fear of offending.
Or is there zero chance of that anyway? 😉
Jeez Phil–maybe he was just writing a comic strip.
They’re allowed to exaggerate sometimes. It’s what they do. And then we get to mock them too. See, it’s a game–we all get to have fun.
“Get Fuzzy” is a comic strip. “Day By Day” is a tendentious political diatribe.
There’s not, really, a middle ground there.
how about “hasn’t put much thought into what the words mean, but likes the attention he gets by repeating them” as a third option ?
Stupidity and vanity as a substitute for insanity and venality? Sure, why not. I’m feeling charitable.
I linked Jacobi over at MY’s TPM last night; but I got a h/t from LGM comments.
I need Crooked Timber and Kotsko to weigh in on this.
“But he also says that the moral law reveals our freedom, immortality, and the existence of God.” …hilzoy
“reveals” is interesting. I know Kant accepted the possibility of revelation, and I think even mysticism. And I have been thinking all night about how a “necessary” postulate differes from a “postulate”.
Being a Kierkeggaard and Nietzsche fan, I probably take “Kantian nihilism” more seriously than many here, and more seriously than I should. Adam Kotsko’s Weblog often discusses, umm, post-rationalist political philosophy or critiques of the Enlightenment. I have read the Zizek threads w/o understanding, I fear.
yes, yes, but tendentious political diatribe can come in the form of comics. And when it does, we should acknowledge that its form allows it the liberty to say more outrageous things than, say, the President.
I have read the Zizek threads w/o understanding, I fear.
No, no, that’s a *good* thing.
And agreed re: Nietzsche & Kant.
I’m almost more thrown off by the Schopenhauer thing. When I saw “Kantian nihilism” I was able to guess how it originated pretty well. Okay, some typically ignorant stuff about moral relativism, but if you just mutter about moral relativism you sound like, well, a crank who has no idea what he’s talking about, but if you attach a well-known philosopher’s name, people will be really impressed. And ‘Kant’ makes sense, because people recognize the name and are vaguely aware that he was around a while ago (in other words ‘Sartrean nihilism’ or whatever might not cut it). I didn’t know about the Rand thing, which is just too perfect, but I think I pretty well guessed the gist of it.
But Schopenhauer, I mean, even aside from the whole “19th century” thing, there are probably, what? six people in all of history who have actually read Schopenhauer? And twenty, tops, who have actually heard of him. I mean, I have only the vaguest second-hand notion of what he wrote, because I’ll be damned if I’m reading his 1200 page book just to better contextualize Nietzsche or whatever. But why mutter “Kant, Schopenhauer, later” instead of “Kant, Confucius” or something?
Slightly OT but a propos pedantry, should I be pleased that the NYT is also willing to call Hizbollah guerrillas, or should I be mortified that I misspelled guerilla?
bob m: ‘reveals’, in the sentence I wrote, doesn’t have the same sense as ‘revelation’ (=divine revelation.) Divine revelation would be God telling you something you wouldn’t know otherwise, e.g. that your wife, though old, would bear a son and your descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky. In the case of freedom, the fact of our being able to derive the moral law from our pure practical reason shows us that we are free, but not in the God-to-Abraham sense.
six people in all of history who have actually read Schopenhauer? And twenty, tops, who have actually heard of him.
I’m probably revealing something that I shouldn’t, but I’m a fan of Schopenhauer, in one of those embarassingly auto-didactical ways that would probably get my butt kicked by someone who seriously studied him. But hey, that’s probably true about everything I know.
And twenty, tops, who have actually heard of [Schopenhauer]
Au contraire! Thanks to the philosophy faculty of the University of Wooloomooloo, everyone’s heard of him!
“Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table
David Hume could out-consume
Schopenhauer and Hegel
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as sloshed as Schlegel
There’s nothing Nietszche couldn’t teach ya
‘Bout the raising of the wrist
Socrates himself was permanently pissed . . . ”
I like Muir because he validates my hatred for anyone younger and more stylish than me.
Schopenhauer writes very amusingly at times, if you can get yourself into a pleasantly embittered state of mind.
I’m a fan of Schopenhauer
LJ comes out!
Me, I’ve never been able to get past part one of World as Will & Idea/Representation, despite having picked up the Everyman’s abridgement, even. (I do *not* buy abridged books, as a rule–paranoia I guess.) I feel like it would be worthwhile to see firsthand what Schope is up to, but can’t make myself do it.
Are you a fan of World, the essays, or the whole Schopenhauerian shebang?
“…six people in all of history who have actually read Schopenhauer?”
Oh, the “World as Will and Representation” is a beautifully written and structured book.
I was unbalanced at the time, but I cried at the end. I think it is considered, or was, because the academic establishment has moved away from its possible appeal, one of the great literary achievements in philosophy.
I read it of course, as part of my Nietzsche study. But having read a lot of Suzuki, I was open to the message (although this was only my reading, and may be idiotic). I see a lot of the East in Schopenhauer, Hinduism and Buddhism, lifting of veils of Maya and stop grasping and all, and the intellectual/emotional/spiritual process of reading Welt involves straining the reason to the breaking point and providing a release. IOW, like the Tractatus, the form illuminates as much as the content.
Damn, I am inarticulate. But for a Western rationalist, it would be very high on my recommendations as an intro to Eastern Philosophy. It can change the way you perceive. Slightly higher would be Finnegans Wake.
Emerson showed up! He’s the man to connect Jacobi, nihilism, and the “exception” to Carl Schmitt.
On you, granduddy.
Stanford on Schopenhauer
“Despite its general precedents within the philosophical family of double-aspect theories, Schopenhauer’s particular characterization of the world as will, is nonetheless novel and daring. It is also frightening and pandemonic: he maintains that the world as it is in itself (sometimes he crucially adds, “for us”) is an endless striving and blind impulse with no end in view, devoid of knowledge, lawless, absolutely free, entirely self-determining and almighty. Within Schopenhauer’s vision of the world as will, there is no God to be comprehended, and the world is conceived of as being utterly meaningless. When anthropomorphically considered, the world is represented as being in a condition of eternal frustration, as it endlessly strives for nothing in particular, and as it goes essentially nowhere. It is a world far beyond any ascriptions of good and evil.”
Seriously, the Upanishads rewritten in the language of German Idealism. I love the guy.
I do actually want to read Schopenhauer, and imagine I will read World some time in the next couple of years, though for now it’s one of those things that consistently loses out to higher priorities. The fact that he is bitter (and sometimes really childishly nasty) is, for me, good because it can make things interesting, plus I can only feel solidarity with lonely kvetchers.
And Bob, the connection to Buddhism is something that comes up in possibly every summary/essay I’ve read about Schopenhauer, e.g. here, so you’re not alone there.
dammit
He’s the one that begins with an S.
I actually own some Heidegger, but haven’t yet penetrated it past…oh, sorry, getting all Ayatollah Khomenei on you. Oh, and I’ve got a bio of him that has been somewhat more deeply inspected.
Also have a bio of Wittgenstein that I’ve read approximately 2/3 of the way through. Guess this makes me roughly three times the philosopher that your average Joe is, or somewhat less than one hundredth of one percent of hilzoy.
Are you a fan of World, the essays, or the whole Schopenhauerian shebang?
The World came to me when I was intensely intererested in Buddhism, and while being immersed in that, some one passed 38 Ways to win an argument, which struck a youthful me as the perfect blend of seriousness and frivolousness. Sort of a Perfect Storm. Not sure if I would have been so interested in him had I known more about some aspects of his life, but it is those youthful ‘ah, this is the Truth’ sort of moments that one looks back on and is simultaneously embarassed and nostalgic
those youthful ‘ah, this is the Truth’ sort of moments that one looks back on and is simultaneously embarassed and nostalgic
i had one of those with The Doors… when i was like 12.
Slarti: if you manage to read Heidegger, you’re a better man than I.
But then, you’d kind of have to be…
Emerson showed up!
Pass him some of that calamari.
oh, yuck! you mean that guy is masturbating?
I saw those strips several times–at lefarkins first–and it never even occurred to me to read his posture that way.
Until certain posters up above suggested it.
Man, that just makes this Muir guy creepy, as well as a moron.
Or are the commenters just seeing stuff that ain’t there? What do I know?
Maybe it’s a gestalt-shift thing? Votes on how many think he’s beating off a duck, and how many think he’s beating off a rabbit?
hil: according to a recent posting by PZ Myers, there’s a lot less of a difference than one might suppose. apparently for a lot of gestation, we all just have a fifth bump.
Wait, I see the true meaning Muir conceals, with Britneyan profundity:
Q: Why is the New York Times anti-American?
A: Kantian nihilism.
Q: Why is the sky pink?
A: Leninist anarchism.
Q: Why has a boy never wept, nor dashed a thousand kim?
A: Muirian thoughtful, well-informed commentary.
and so on.
I had the exact same reaction: KANTEAN FREAKING NIHILISM?
This guy should be ashamed to wake up in the morning. Probably a good career move for ingratiating with the “facts burn me to the touch” crowd.
“but it is those youthful ‘ah, this is the Truth’ sort of moments that one looks back on and is simultaneously embarassed and nostalgic”
I had em once a week;in the 70s it was my reading strategy. I think you need to read argumentative works the first time in a complete “suspension of disbelief.” Hal Lindsay had me going for a while.
Also, “Thomas atheism” drew a belly-laugh. The thing is, this guy’s obviously pulling random words, since all but the basics are meaningless. I look forward to his next column on the philosophy of “doughnut skyscraperism.”
As an Australian who hasn’t been exposed to Chris Muir, my immediate thoughts are-
1. That he’s a lazy artist. See how he uses the same male figure in frame 1 of the first strip and frame 3 of the second strip. He’s just recycled the same figure.
2. The apparent premise, that rightwing youngsters are not only really smart but really buff and glamorous, is kind of transparent (wish-fulfillment) and pathetic, don’t you think?
2. The apparent premise, that rightwing youngsters are not only really smart but really buff and glamorous, is kind of transparent (wish-fulfillment) and pathetic, don’t you think?
Yes, especially since the ‘smartness’ is superficial in the extreme.
call me superficial, but my first reaction was “why depict the man putting his hand down his own pants?”, followed closely by, “gross, he’s doing it again”.
Now try to rehabilitate ‘Britney Spearsian profundity’.
“I’m addicted to you
Don’t you know that you’re toxic
And I love what you do
Don’t you know that you’re toxic”
There. That’s as profound as anything written to explain the results of the 2004 election.
Asses are where Muir’s real talent lies.
Note to hilzoy: Don’t believe the philosopher in the mirror.
What a tool you are.
y’all need a life.
Sorry. Too dogmatic.
Carry on with your tiny lives.
Makes me warm,
C
note to Chris Muir:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
you really *are* that dumb! Who would have thought it?
Standing around with your hands down your pants, spouting names you know nothing about–and now this is all you have to say when you’re busted?
Someone up thread said you were never funny–well, with this lame little post of yours, that can no longer be said of you.
Don’t let’em get you down, Chris–your asses are bouncy!
y’all need a life.
Heaven forbid people comment on a cartoon aimed for a broad audience (it is hoped). How gauche*.
Hah!
Life-get a life!
Note to hilzoy: Don’t believe the philosopher in the mirror.
Ummm…you got a better one?
Speaking as a guy who finds you funny more times than not, Chris, you might just want to do a little homework before hacking at your critics. Sometimes, they’re smarter than you.
Posted by: chris Muir | July 20, 2006 at 11:00 PM
lol
way to prove you’re not a loser
The fact that he is bitter (and sometimes really childishly nasty) is, for me, good because it can make things interesting
Better, than, is Adorno’s Jargon of Authenticity. As far as I could tell, it was one long, bitter hit piece on Heidegger and Jaspers.
ahahaha
p.s. omg gay people have butt sex!!!!!!!!
How cool is this: Chris Muir has been reading enough to be able to create a sort of minor Kantian word salad — with added alleged “jokes” about teh gay!!
Heh heh. He said A posteriori! Heh.
Adorno’s Jargon of Authenticity
So I hear, but Heidegger is kind of one of my guys so I may just resent it. Though I have a friend who’s big into Adorno who says there’s substance behind the polemic.
Chris Muir seems to be going around to all the blogs that have made fun of him.
No, just the ones I find teh amusing.
I really don’t have a dog in this fight (honestly, I don’t), but I think this is not as simple of a discussion as you might think. Try checking out Wikipedia’s definition of nihilism, which includes this:
It seems from that paragraph that Chris Muir and Ayn Rand are not the only folks who believe that Kant == nihilism.
And Bruce Wilshire has a book called “Fashionable Nihilism” about:
** Analytic Philosophy**!!
It seems from that paragraph that Chris Muir and Ayn Rand are not the only folks who believe that Kant == nihilism.
Right, obscurantist reactionaries also believe that. And you point is?
(Had you read the thread, you would’ve seen that Jacobi was bruited about way upstream.)
The point is that, for normal people, a guy who thinks a universal moral law is implanted within each of us by virtue of our being rational beings … is not a nihilist.
P.S. to Glenn Greenwald’s Brazilian squeeze: Please quit posting comments here using Chris Muir’s name and IP address. You’re making Chris look even dumber than he already did, and Glenn will get jealous.
I love the way morons like Anderson immediately assume I believe in a universal moral law.
Way to miss the entire point, cretin.
All you see is black & white. So much for ‘nuance’. Sheesh.
So I guess the charitable read on that last comment is that Chris Muir is a master of self-referential irony.
I love the way morons like Anderson immediately assume I believe in a universal moral law.
self-ownership
Ouch. This is getting to be like watching a cat toying with a still-living mouse.
Gromit: no, it’s like watching a still-living mouse pretend to be a cat and kill itself.
Oblivius, Jacobi was briefly touched upon by Joshua and Hil upthread. And I’m just going by a quick walk through some links here, but if you look a little further afield than Wikipedia (try the stanford link for example), it’s pretty clear that Jacobi’s attachment of ‘nihilism’ to Kant was basically, uh, reactionary. The stuff I looked at was enough to make me willing to take Hil’s word for it that Jacobi’s reading of Kant is “eccentric” and conclude that Muir’s reference is one of those “dog whistle politics” things.
BTW I’d like to share what has been both funny and terrifying about this little exposure to the philosophical underpinnings of modern thought (other than the fact that in my formerly professional opinion this really does look like a condom ad that is). It’s been the reminder that people like Chris Muir seriously, genuinely, no kidding and quite literally, want to undo the foundations of science.
Of course Muir’s 12:22 is hysterically funny too. In order to avoid violating posting rules like Toadmonster did I think I’ll just make an “L” sign with my hand and hold it up to the screen…
I can’t help noticing that in the “a posteriori” cartoon Muir is still using the same picture of the man. One might almost think that he’s afraid directing his gaze toward the male form might make him too much like . . . Andrew Sullivan. Or Leonardo.
Of course, he re-uses a panel with the woman, too, so he might just be lazy. But when you put these all together it’s really hard to tell if this series if strips is about philosophy, or if, like Nancy, it’s really more a form of soft-core porn.
Thanks for the entertainment,
C!
guys we’re playing right into his hands
the awesome thing about chris Muir’s comments is what they reveal about his cartoons. his cartoons are glib not because of the limitations of the form. more likely it’s the limitations of their artist. the following post, in particular, needs only the accompaniment of a buff man (preferably with a mullet and his hands down his pants), and it’s next week’s day by day:
I love the way morons like Anderson immediately assume I believe in a universal moral law.
Way to miss the entire point, cretin.
All you see is black & white. So much for ‘nuance’. Sheesh.
too funny.
guys we’re playing right into his hands
What, by giving him more rope?
Hilzoy said:
Slarti: if you manage to read Heidegger, you’re a better man than I.
I did a semester pounding Being and Time in Aberdeen and by the end of it, I actually found myself rather enamoured of the work. It really did affect how I approached certain concepts as while as some philosophy of mind and epistimology.
However, the first 2 months of that class I spent in a panic because not one sentence of the text made a lick of sense to me. Thankfully I had a teacher who was not only an expert, but a patient expert.
No, just the ones I find teh amusing.
Ow. Owowowowow. Don’t get me wrong. I love things that are teh c001. Or teh roXXor. Or even, as some of my friends often say “teh sex” (it means really really good, as it often does for college kids). The idea here is that they set off an irony meter. It isn’t something one just throws into an otherwise normal sentence and expects to fly because at that point it is, well, serious… or some such. Mostly just jarring and odd.
Not exactly substantive, but I liked you better when I just read your comics. You wrote better. And that isn’t meant to be entirely snarky. I found your comics funny if they have the right audience (which is not me). Kinda like Ann Coulter only without the viciousness.
six people in all of history who have actually read Schopenhauer?
And one of those was Ira Gershwin.
I was wondering if chris Muir the commenter was some kind of fake poster trying to discredit the real Chris Muir, like all those fake Als at Kevin Drum’s site. He isn’t talking like someone who can analyze things for Kantishness.
Within Schopenhauer’s vision of the world as will, there is no God to be comprehended, and the world is conceived of as being utterly meaningless. When anthropomorphically considered, the world is represented as being in a condition of eternal frustration, as it endlessly strives for nothing in particular, and as it goes essentially nowhere.
Since I always try to analyze philosophy through the lens of the Dungeons and Dragons “Planescape” campaign setting, I am grateful that the above excerpt appeared, as I now have a more specific association for the Bleak Cabal faction. They’re Schopenhauer… ists.
lol mds
I wish comment etiquette allowed mere notes of gratitude. You know, something along the lines of, “hey, I just happened across this thread and you’ve made my boring cubicle life that much brigher” or “damn, this is the funniest thing i’ve read in ages.”
Since it isn’t, I’ll take a moment to speculate on the female figure in the cartoon. The one where she’s holding the spangly blanket.
First appearance – oblivious of her right hand trying to strangle her with it
Second appearance – bewildered by its continued presence at her ear
Third appearance – hopeful that this time it will succeed and she will finally be free
I love the way morons like Anderson immediately assume I believe in a universal moral law.
Far from it, sir, far from it.
But we weren’t talking about “Muirian nihilism,” were we? Perhaps we should?
Now that Chris Muir’s managed to combine both offensively stupid Kant jokes and simply offensive gay-bashing humor, I feel compelled to sink to his level…
Given his copious recycling of the same images, it seems obvious that when Kant writes about the synthetic a prior Muir thought he was calling for synthetic cartoonionis?
(chirp, chirp, chirp).
FTB–
agreed. But the best–the BEST–exchange was this:
Ouch. This is getting to be like watching a cat toying with a still-living mouse.
Posted by: Gromit | July 21, 2006 at 12:37 AM
Gromit: no, it’s like watching a still-living mouse pretend to be a cat and kill itself.
Posted by: hilzoy | July 21, 2006 at 12:39 AM
Well I, for one, am grateful that Muir didn’t bring his A-game. Thus far his contributions in this thread seem to be semantically equivalent to “Neener, neener”. If he’d brought the intellectual powerhouse that came up with Kantian Nihilism, we might be in trouble.
Hmm. It must be lack of sleep but some reason I could see the lyrics and music of Sir Mix A Lot’s “Baby Got Back” set to the images of this strip. 😉
I thought of a remix in that the man’s stomach keeps arguing with him which is why he keeps his hand over it. (Shutup Kuato!) But that is probably too vague or weird of a reference. 😉 Punchline ? “Get your ass to Mars”.
Procrastinating_Revolutionary,
For a very similar effect, google a bit and you will find an anime montage cut to “Baby Got Back” that is absolutely hysterical.
I have been reading through Day by Day since this thread started and there are some real doozies in there, especially in the runup to the Iraq war. So far, March 25, 2003 has been the best for predictions that were horribly horribly wrong. Ironically, the character being mocked was spot on.
“Ironically, the character being mocked was spot on.”
Irony’s one thing. What’s interesting is that the same character would still be mocked now, for the crime of having been right back then.
Like Muir, mocking the commenters here precisely because they know enough about philosophy to know he doeesn’t know what he’s talking about.
I don’t know if it’s a new wrinkle in the RW “death, lies and obfuscations” tactics, or it’s been there all along, but the Right now mocks people for being accurate and knowledgeable, as if only a moron would think being accurate and knowledgeable were virtues. The pose, the posturing, is all that matters.
I don’t know if it’s a new wrinkle in the RW “death, lies and obfuscations” tactics, or it’s been there all along, but the Right now mocks people for being accurate and knowledgeable
My suspicion is that this is a result of the anti-intellectual and anti-science aspects of the religious right rubbing off on other factions within the party. Alternatively, it could just be that this is the only possible reaction for someone intellectually inflexible who believes something counterfactual when confronted with reality: attack the credibility of those who know what they’re talking about.
It doesn’t make the anti-intellectual less wrong. But it throws enough chaff and uncertainty into the air that they can sustain the level of self-deception necessary to avoid changing their minds.
Even though I think Kant is, more or less, right, I think I can see where Muir gets “Kantian nihilism.” Kant often talks about people’s legislating the moral law, and some people might take this in a fairly straightforward way, as meaning: morality is whatever people want it to be. Now, that would be a horrible reading of Kant, but it once was a fairly common misreading, no?
hm. what? how’s that?
It’s interesting to note that this blatant anti-intellectualism is spouted from the mouths of young, pseudo-intellectual characters. The comment about Chick tracts was bang-on. These arent comix, they’re agitprop. And like Chick tracts, they are funny in ways their creators can’t even begin to understand (and of this, we have evidence, right here in the comments!)
As for “The one that begins with an ‘S'”, I love the guy, but he always gets a bad rap, even from the ‘intellectual’ left… John Ralston Saul smears him as “Hitler’s favorite philosopher”, and this, above all else, points to the explaination for the hubristic cartoonist’s blundering reference to both him and Kant. Panel two’s incredulous “Old German philosophy as a guide?”, is surely meant to (not-so-subtly) imply a connection between the NYT and Nazi Germany, skirting the letter of Godwin’s law.
This discussion hooked me from the start, not because of the cartoon (a trivial jumping off point), but because of the larger matter of the popular contemporary denial of objective reality. You see it in political conservatism, of course, and religious fundamentalism, naturally, but you also see it on the left of the social spectrum, for example, in the contemporary visual art world, particularly.
Clement Greenberg, modernist art critic generally agreed to be the greatest art critic of the 20th C., fell from fashion coincident with the rise ‘postmodernism’. Greenberg’s thought was heavily influenced by the objective philosophy of Kant; yet, today, those “in the know” reject him out of hand for his “rigid, dogmatic” views, but generally do so in a manner which tells anyone personally familiar with Greenberg’s writings that they, quite simply, aren’t.
Oh, and if “funny” can’t be objectively determined, then how is it so obvious to us that some people have better senses of humor than others… and why do most intelligent people tend to have a better sense of humor than, say, Chris Muir?
Like Muir, mocking the commenters here precisely because they know enough about philosophy to know he doeesn’t know what he’s talking about.
right.
i’m just amazed he’d take the chance on using something as esoteric as philosophy (no offense to the fans here, but most people don’t know Kant from Kierkegaard) as the punchline to a comic strip. the group of people who are going to get the joke is going to include those people who know enough philosophy to know that Muir doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
and then to mix it in with butt jokes! is there a big overlap between philosophiles and homophobes ?
cleek: that’s what puzzled me: as I said, I don’t see any reason why most people should know about Kant (or at least, no reason more compelling than ‘sure would be nice if everyone knew everything about everything’), and in fact, most people don’t. Which is fine. But then why pretend to?
(forgot to add…)
it just sounds like he’s quoting philosophy he learned third-hand (ex. from a book about Ayn Rand which quotes her on Kant). someone who knows Kant would have to know “Kantian nihilism” is going to be a tough sell to others who know Kant. maybe he just couldn’t give up that pun.
but cleek, there’s the mystery: there is no pun in the first one. It isn’t even funny. And it suggests the immediate parallel: ‘Taking an ancient religious text as his guide — no wonder Bush is behind the times!’, which in turn suggests the equally obvious reply: if either the Bible or Kant is right, so what? And then the strip dissolves in pointlessness, and you think: gosh, that was a waste of perfectly good brain cells, working that one out.
Not the response I’d be gunning for if I were a cartoonist, but there we are.
“is there a big overlap between philosophiles and homophobes?”
wow–big topic in itself. Probably better to save it for another thread.
there is no pun in the first one
heh, yeah.
i suppose i shouldn’t suggest that maybe he was building up to spring that pun in the second strip – it’s a long way to go for such little payoff. then again, none of these strips have much payoff anyway.
that was a waste of perfectly good brain cells, working that one out
whew. and how.
There seem to be a great number of people on the internets who have a desperate need to be seen as smart or intellectual by their readers, and who, having been caught in a gaffe, rather than say “oops, my bad” instead explode in a very public and amusing manner.
The list is long, and Chris Muir just joined it. I won’t mention the others, as they seem to spend their days endlessly trolling blogs for mentions of themselves so they can bluster noisily on the comment section.
gosh, that was a waste of perfectly good brain cells, working that one out.
What doesn’t kill me, only makes me stronger?
I wouldn’t bother adding anything to this, but Muir strikes me as the kind of guy who’ll be checking this thread well into 2007, so here goes:
Mr. Muir, I’m a cartoonist, and like all male cartoonists, the bulk of my output in the immediate aftermath of puberty consisted of pictures that gave me a boner.
But like what I assume to be the vast majority of male cartoonists, I moved on.
Now, to be fair, this might not have been the case had not the home-video revolution dovetailed nicely with my sexual awakening, but there it is.
You, sir, have no excuse, given the current media landscape. Y’know how they say you shouldn’t go grocery shopping on an empty stomach? Surely you can see where I’m going with this.
Or just stick with the back-arching uberbabes that talk like Cheese Weasel, whichever.
clarke–
so, what you’re saying is that he’s about as good considered as a cartoonist as he is considered as a Kant scholar?
nah–he can at least draw a line from one point to another.
From Rand’s perspective Nihilism is Kantian not because Kant was a nihilist, but because his philosophy was the enabler of nihilism. When Kant wrote, religion was receding to reason and people were looking for logical and rational explanations to everything, including morality. Kant specifically carved out a niche outside the reach of reason “in order to save room for faith”. He postulated a “noumenal world” outside the reach of reason as the source for his “categorical imperative” which was to be the basis of all morality. His imperative was restrictive, but his basis arbitrary, since the noumenal world could not be perceived by the senses or understood by reason. My guess was as good as yours as to what the true morality really was. This is the origin of moral relativism, my morality is different to your morality. From there, it is a trivial step to deny the existence of the noumenal world, and by denying the supposed source of morals deny all of morality, thus nihilism. So from Kant to Nihilism the steps are small, but from before Kant to after Kant the step is huge, that is why Nihilism is Kantian, because it is derived from the Kantian tradition, the Kantian school of thought.
A similar example is the use of the word “Liberal” when describing welfare state proposals such as socialized medicine. The original liberals were for the free market, but today, because of the historical context, the advocates of socialized medicine come from a liberal tradition so they call themselves liberals. In a similar vein, Kant was not a Nihilist, but because of the historical context the advocates of nihilism come from a Kantian tradition so they are Kantian on that sense.
Francisco G, that is a truly righteous summation. I can’t claim that my opinion is in any way well-informed or anything like that, but that’s my opinion, for whatever it’s worth. Kudos.
My guess was as good as yours as to what the true morality really was.
That’s not in any way correct as a description of Kant’s moral philosophy.
You’re also confused about the connection between his metaphysics and his ethics. He surely did think moral truths were accessible, they were just only accessible by reason.
Francisco G: what washerdreyer said.
Basically, Kant thought (for quite good reasons) that if you hold that a judgment about an ordinary object like, oh, a table has to reflect the nature of that object as it is in itself, then it would follow that we had no certain knowledge, and reason would be unable to do much of anything beyond pure logic, and statements like: if this is a table, then it is a table. In order to secure the possibility of knowledge both of ordinary objects like tables and of claims about things like causality, he basically said: for a judgment about an object to be true, it must reflect the nature of that object considered as an object of experience. But the point was to secure knowledge, and also to save reason from various real problems that it got into otherwise.
His moral philosophy is different, because (according to Kant, and I think he’s right here) we do not know about morality in the same way that we know about e.g. tables. We do not, that is, perceive moral objects or properties and then form judgments based on those perceptions. Instead, we derive moral truths using pure reason. The inaccessibility of things in themselves has nothing to do with it. (In fact, one of Kant’s problems was that it’s tempting to say that when we’re talking about morality, reason does give us knowledge of some facts about some things in themselves, e.g. that we are free moral agents.)
“My guess is as good as yours as to what the true morality was” is not just false as a description of Kant, as washerdreyer said; it’s about as far from the truth as it would be possible to get. It really is like saying that Hayek was a Marxist, or that Mao was a libertarian, or that the really striking feature of Jackson Pollock’s painting is its unflinching realism.
Francisco’s error is similar, if not parallel, to the common caricature of Protestantism during the Reformation: sin now, be forgiven later, repeat as necessary.
All credit for (correct) statements made by me about Kant to Paul/ine Klein/geld.
All blame for forgetting things she taught me is my own.
Well, but couldn’t you say it does in practice lead to “my guess is as good as yours” even if that’s not at all what Kant argued, because we can each make ‘purely rational’ opposite arguments about the morality of, e.g., suicide? In practice.
I really can’t think of a tenable explanation for Rand’s phrase, though. More commonly you see Nietzsche get attacked, since that’s where you get the death of the subject and the thing-in-itself, and the genealogical criticism of morality. So I guess Kant is responsible because he paved the way for the rejection of Kant…?
“reason does give us knowledge of some facts about some things in themselves, e.g. that we are free moral agents.)”
Umm, ya know I see Kant as more systematic and unitary than that, and that free will is a postulate is as important to Kant as it is to Kierkeggaard. The seven “necessary postulates” in order of importance:rational universe, just(pleasing) universe, God,
immortality, free will,space,time.
Kant’s purpose, IMO, was that Aquinas’s separation of faith and science was breaking down under assaults by Berkeley & Hume et al, and he was trying to save faith by making science dependent on it.
I think the “nihilism” comes about when serious thinkers try to save some of the postulates while discarding others that make them uncomfortable. Not “Kantian nihilism” but “Kant or nihilism.”
“Instead, we derive moral truths using pure reason. The inaccessibility of things in themselves has nothing to do with it.”
Nihilist. 🙂 The inaccessibility make the derivation possible.
You Are All Going to Hell
An Unfogged thread, as usual the interesting stuff is in the comments, supposing God revealed Himself, and said like thunder: “Gays must burn or thou shalt burn.”
Some said, hey like hell is forever, so gonna do what gotta do. Some said, ta heck with God and hell, my categorical imperative don’t let me burn teh gay.
Now pure and practical reason may in some sense allow to figure out the Right, but without the certainty of reward and an unjust universe, there is no way you call acting morally “justified and rational.”
It moves into the aesthetic, maybe a high aesthetic, but still simply cause you like it and makes you feel good. Utilitarianism and consequentialism runs into this problem often.
I can only add, minutely, to this brilliant thread, a pun: Y Kant Muir Draw?
Chris Muir needs to be informed that, despite a political slant, a cartoon should amuse. Are we to credit him only because he espouces rightwing ideas in cartoon form. I suggest he study Tom Tomorrow, to learn how to do that, and throw himself in a three week booze and drug binge after.
I can only add, minutely, to this brilliant thread, a pun: Y Kant Muir Draw?
Welllll
Muir hires out the graphics. The characters are a palette of computer-drawn pieces that he can assemble into a strip and print, and he contracts out for more characters or more poses of existing characters as required. He only originates the dialogue. Such as it is.
I’m afraid you’ve put Descartes before the horse.
So wait, not only is the “dialogue” nothing but agitprop disguised as conversations, but he didn’t even do any of the art?
I feel soiled for ever being under the misapprehension that there was a shred of talent involved in these tracts.
Well, that explains why I keep seeing that guy standing in that position, over and over and over again. I was wondering why he was frozen…
Maybe we should pass the hat so that Muir can buy some more poses?
Speaking of both Kant and things that make heads explode:
we do not know about morality in the same way that we know about e.g. tables. We do not, that is, perceive moral objects or properties and then form judgments based on those perceptions. Instead, we derive moral truths using pure reason.
This is the kind of philosophical statement that makes me go “bzwuh?”, because it seems obvious to me that humans form moral judgements based on neither perception (as of a table) NOR pure reason, but on emotion.
As a descriptive statement, the above is what we non-philosophers call “wrong”.
Are you (and Kant) being prescriptive, instead? When you say “we”, do you mean “we philosophers”? When you say “we derive moral truths using pure reason” do you mean “we philosophers *should* derive moral truths using pure reason”? And what then happens to the role of emotion, which is what our moral sense looks like in the first place? How can Kant (& co) call something “morality” when it does not have the content of human moral experience, which is the strong emotional reaction of rightness or wrongness?
I’ve just always wanted to know.
So the philosophical use of the term “nihilism” was first coined to describe… Emmanuel Kant? How embarrassing.
I must say, most people who diss Rand are embarrassingly ignorant of Rand, even while bemoaning the supposedly ignorant name-dropping of other philosophers — she’s radioactive, don’t ya know.
Doctor Science asks,
“Are you (and Kant) being prescriptive, instead?”
No.
“When you say ‘we’, do you mean “we philosophers”?”
No, Kant means every rational agent (though perhaps not God; I don’t know if God _derives_ moral truths from pure reason, as God’s reason doesn’t proceed discursively (i.e., via concepts) but rather intuitively (i.e., via intuitions)).
“When you say ‘we derive moral truths using pure reason’ do you mean ‘we philosophers *should* derive moral truths using pure reason’?
No, Kant means that, when we get at moral truths, we derive those moral truths with pure reason.
“And what then happens to the role of emotion, which is what our moral sense looks like in the first place?”
That’s a good question, and not an easy one to answer. Professor Hilzoy would probably be better placed to answer this than I, but for Kant, emotion plays a supplementary role; it can help to motivate people to follow the dictates of pure reason (although it can also make it more difficult for people to follow those dictates), and to some extent it can help (or hurt) not just with *following* reason’s dictates, but also with *identifying* them; someone under the influence of what Kant calls an “affect” (a powerful emotion that interferes with the working of reason) might be briefly unable to see what her moral duty in a particular situation is.
“How can Kant (& co) call something ‘morality’ when it does not have the content of human moral experience, which is the strong emotional reaction of rightness or wrongness?”
Well, rightness or wrongness, Kant would say, is not an emotional reaction, but a property of actions or maxims. Kant never says that we can’t have emotions reactions to actions or maxims, though.
What Bobcat said.
About emotion: Kant thinks that it is not itself a guide to action, except as informed by reason. This is (it seems to me) right: consider the ways in which kids’ emotions are not just impeded, but actually changed, through socialization, so that (for instance) most of us don’t have to repress a desire to take other people’s stuff whenever it appeals to us, even though the desirability of some of that stuff is perfectly clear to us.
(I, for instance, love the Jag that belongs to my department chair. But he could leave me in charge of the keys without having to worry that I’d take it. And that’s not because i’d have to suppress an urge to take it, nor because the fear of punishment would outweigh that desire, or anything. I just don’t have to suppress such desires anymore, since I don’t regard stuff that belongs to other people as take-able, though perhaps in extreme circumstances — starvation, someone else’s food, etc. — that might change.)
Casey: only if one considers Jacobi’s arguments at all persuasive. Muir only made himself look worse as he built to his first pun-ish punch line and his second gay-baiting one. I suppose there is an underlying irony here: Muir’s strips probably make more sense to reactionaries who reject the Enlightenment….
Dr. Science,
I think the declaration that morality is just emotional reactions of right or wrong is pretty powerfully undersupported. One of the things that many discover as they delve into philosophy is that our moral intuition is often inconsistent, incomplete, and outright wrong.
Morever, using emotional response as a basis for moral evaluations robs morality of any proscriptive power. At the very least, it turns moral decrees as matters of taste and emotional reflex, which calls into question why on earth we should be guided by them (especially when the response only occurs in others). That is, why should I consider any moral emotions other than my own in determining correct behavior?
One of the most pressing problems of morality is how to justify any moral system using reason, perceptual abilities, etc. However, one thing that has come clear over the years is that supposing an emotional basis for morality robs the word of much that we consider integral to its definition.
I think what Dr. Science is saying is that “morality” *as practiced* by most people doesn’t seem to have much to do with reason. Rather, the average person gets his/her moral rules from family and culture, and enforces it on him/herself and others based on emotions such as guilt and outrage. This seems obviously true regardless of whether one can come up with a rational basis for the rules themselves.
What kenB said.
Reason-based morality *must* be prescriptive, because it sure ain’t descriptive. The observable fact that not even philosophers change their minds on moral issues very often proves that even for them reason is only invited to the morality party to support the principles emotion (heritage, psychology, culture) has already chosen.
Just in case it’s not self-evident, I am not the “Casey” at 1:18 who just dropped a delicate sneer on behalf of Ayn Rand.
(FTR, I haven’t bothered reading Rand since high-school. She has nothing to say that matters to me – and neither do her adherents.)
Could hil start a new thread on this? I find it interesting, but I think a step away from the Randian version would be useful.
Roundup of stuff: blogroll, comics
I am feeling the pull of the political blogs again, for the first time since the US Presidential elections of 2004. I’ve been reading them a lot, and have added Red State Son, The Whiskey Bar and Wisse Words to…
Roundup of stuff: blogroll, comics
I am feeling the pull of the political blogs again, for the first time since the US Presidential elections of 2004. I’ve been reading them a lot, and have added Red State Son, The Whiskey Bar and Wisse Words to…
I’m actually not impressed with the rhetorical skill in the cartoon. It’s clumsy, obviously.
Jacobi’s argument, which apparently introduced the term “nihilism” into philosophical discourse as he used it to describe the end product of Kantian absolutism, would probably be agreed upon by Rand, as it seems to have been a prevalant Russian interpretation of Kant when she attended college with some of the most impressive scholars in St. Petersberg. I can see her seeing nihilism in any fragment of mysticism in a philosophic system, easily, and for very compelling reasons within her valuable definitions — absolutism she would have regarded as equally unreal as subjectivism, and a form of nihilism.
Yeah, Kant pretty much concedes that the Categorical Imperative is a useful myth. (Compare Socrates’s “noble lie” in Plato’s Republic.) That is, we can’t know what it is, but only suppose that it exists because it’s a way for accounting for the notion of moral laws which are in no way contingent.
To someone who rejects the possibility or significance of the purely a priori, a categorical imperative amounts to “because I say so,” and implicitly relativism. The difficulty is, of course, that not everyone need share the moral intuitions and common notions he builds on to reach the categorical imperative, expecially the notion that morality must be completely non-contingent.
It’s not enough to dismiss exception-making as weakness, when all we have to start with are common notions in the first place.
Ben H: “Yeah, Kant pretty much concedes that the Categorical Imperative is a useful myth. (Compare Socrates’s “noble lie” in Plato’s Republic.) That is, we can’t know what it is, but only suppose that it exists because it’s a way for accounting for the notion of moral laws which are in no way contingent.”
What is your basis for saying this? I don’t think it’s true. For one thing, Kant provides three quite explicit versions of the CI (which he says are equivalent), so I’m puzzled by the idea that “we don’t know what it is.”
The point I am trying to establish, and which many philosophers try to draw out early in their attempts to spread the love of wisdom, is that outrage and guilt are not enough to motivate the framework and enforcement of moral codes. My outrage does not provide a reason to justify your moral code.
Thus, if we honestly believe one ought not do certain things, we must justify with more substantial reasons than “it makes me feel outraged”. While many persons are non-reflective about the justification of moral claims (unfortunately), once they begin to reflect on morality, they often accept that emotion is not a reasonable basis for morality.
However, if we take how “most people” justify moral claims as basic and then try to extend the idea of what morality really is based on that basic concept, we discover that the term “morality” becomes greatly impoverished and no longer depicts our vision of what morality ought to mean.
Most philosophers take the definition of morality (that is, what it is and what it should accomplish in terms of providing “ought” statements) as basic and then note that emoitonal responses such as outrage and guilt cannot justify claims on what it means to be moral. Just because many people think that emotions do so, doesn’t they actually do. Just like many people believeing the world was flat never made it true either.
Lastly, intractibility on moral issues doesn’t justify the claim that outrage and guilt justify morality. In fact, it should suggest the opposite. Emotional responses are easily changeable and tend to flitter all over the place. If people’s moral claims are indeed as intractable as you claim (a point I am dubious about), this might rather suggest that we do indeed create moral frameworks which are resistent to change because of their solid grounding in reason.
In point of fact, I think moral opinions waver all over the place for many quite simply because they are not reflective about the implications of their beliefs and therefore (wrongly) tie emotions to morality.
And of course I type all of this with the understanding that hilzoy will correct me if I make some wildly misleading or factually incorrect philosophical claim. As goes with(out) saying, everything here can be read with a giant “As I understand it…” at the front.
Toadmonster: But Schopenhauer, I mean, even aside from the whole “19th century” thing, there are probably, what? six people in all of history who have actually read Schopenhauer? And twenty, tops, who have actually heard of him. I mean, I have only the vaguest second-hand notion of what he wrote, because I’ll be damned if I’m reading his 1200 page book just to better contextualize Nietzsche or whatever.
You do not need to read twelve hundred pages of The World as Will and Idea to enjoy, enjoy, enjoy Schopenhauer. His short essays are delightful fun. Start right here!
Or better yet… One hundred and thirty years before Albert Gore invented the Internet, Schopenhauer composed this complete guide on How To Troll, which, despite the march of “progress,” has not been surpassed to this day.
If somewhere a conservative(trying to sound informed and intelligent, but instead coming off as being supremely ignorant) criticizes some obscure, over-named philosophical approach supposedly being practiced by liberals, then you can bet that Ayn Rand or her students of “objectivism” are behind it. It’s okay if you read and bought into some of her crap back in high school. But really, now that you’re an adult, it’s time to grow up.
Whither Nihilism?
The Liberal Avenger
Attention: Its probably fair to say that none of the specific ideas in this post are original to me. Not only do I stand on…
Oh God thank you! Because I consulted Wikipedia and numerous other web resources on Kant in an effort to make heads or tails as to what point Muir was trying to make in that strip. It’s clear to me now that his intention was merely to inject some pseudo-intellectual bunkum into gratuitious T and A. Looking forward to perusing socratic_me’s link when I get the chance. Ayn Rand….Bleech!
Sounds like Rand thought the problem with Woodstock was that the public health regulations were inadequate. – Bernard Yomtov
No. She was just mad no-one invited her.
Meanwhile, I’m still trying to imagine Kant at Woodstock:
Random Stoned Hippy: man, that’s deep, man
Kant: Bot ju jost don’t get it, no? Ze categorical fun imperitive ist der vay dat morality verks […] by der vay — vair ist der sex? I vas promised der voot be der sex in der mod here, ya? and it vood be very moral sex too, because it would be categorical sex dat everyone vood be doing it, ya? Did someone lie to me? ‘Cause lying ist very immoral, no?
Oh … could “Kant is a nihilist” be one of those “counter-intuitive” things people say to make themselves look smart?
It seems I’ve blogged on this phenomenon (check out my archives < / blogwhore >).
All right, I’m very late to the party, but I did want to let you know I’ve linked to this page from my own humble blog, “Pragmatism Refreshed.”
As the name of my blog is meant to suggest, I try on the whole to present an updated variant of the world-view of Peirce and James, but mostly I use that pretense as an excuse to write about whatever touches my fancy — the history of diplomacy, the fate of the auto industry, the passing weirdness one encounters in each daily newspaper, and … the stupidity of pretentious cartoonists.
Great minds do think alike. Togolosh (above) and I both thought of the Australian philosophers. And the Queen’s a good sheila.
You and your readers are welcome to drop by. In the meantime, thanks for the fodder.
Day By Day’s Chris Muir Gives Hillary a Blackface
Chris Muir, the cartoonist who draws Day By Day, thought it was a terribly unfair double standard that only liberals get to use blackface so he decided to do something about it.
I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith. The dogmatism of metaphysics, that is, the preconception that it is possible to make headway in metaphysics without a previous[!] criticism of pure reason, is the source of all that unbelief, always very dogmatic, which wars against [absolutely selfless] morality. [Kant, CPR, Muller, 1966, xxxix]