Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Happy birthday, Immanuel Kant
He'd be 284 years old today. Amazing. He was an organist and a delightful conversationalist, apparently, and one of the truly important writers and thinkers. One of the most interesting constructs of his contributions to the language of thought, oxymoronic though the exercise itself may well be, is the labels he gave for knowledge. He called one 'a priori' and the other 'a posteriori' truths. The distinction is that the former is fundamental and undeniably true, by virtue of its essence ("All boys are male," for example) while the other, a posteriori, cannot be known or even verified solely by the use of reason ("Boys are fidgety," for example, even if many or even most people think true, requires observation and studying to determine).

In college, I studied Kant in some depth and wrote a 100+ page thesis on his Critique of Practical Reason. And today when I started writing about him, I felt excited and happy. There is something about Kant's writing and thinking that actually quickens my mental pulse. How's that for ultimately geeky.

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Permalink | | posted by jau at 9:15 AM


5 more:
Blogger ligneus — at 10:28 PM, April 22, 2008:
As someone who for various reasons left school at fifteen a long time ago now, I'm very envious of your having done that. But there you go, you have one life, you make choices and it all works out somehow. I like to apply to it what Philip Larkin said about time:

Whether or not we use it, it goes
And leaves what something hidden from us chose.
 

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Blogger jau — at 1:42 AM, April 23, 2008:
I love that quotation - and its thought. Believe me, studying Kant was wonderful but I did it in a time when I felt blown along by choices others were making for me, not ones I made for myself. Making one's own choices makes all the difference, I now know.

And I want to know more about yours - what made you leave school so young? Was it compelling? Is that why you read so widely? Tell me more!
 

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Blogger ligneus — at 8:24 AM, April 23, 2008:
At the risk of being boring, I'd changed school three times on account of my parents moves, then my dad got a farm on which I used to work weekends and one Monday on my fifteenth birthday I kept working and never went back to school, it wasn't a decision, just something that 'happened to happen'. [to quote Philip Larkin again!] Silly really, I was at a Grammar School, doing well, I was underweight though, under 80 pounds, in nine months working I put on nearly forty pounds. So here I am 57 years later still healthy, still working, so maybe all in all it was a good 'happening'.
The reading is just something that continued after my formal education didn't.
 

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Blogger jau — at 9:21 AM, April 23, 2008:
On the other hand, my family lived in the same house in Greenwich Village for 32 years. Stability in NYC?? Were all those moves a bit upsetting? I think of the UK as such a stable place where one can return decades later and find life continuing peacefully and calmly.

Not to be nosy or anything (heh) but what made you cross the pond?
 

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Blogger ligneus — at 10:18 PM, April 25, 2008:
I was thirty one, there was a woman I wanted to marry but it didn't work out, I'd always wanted to 'see more of the world' so I came over for a one year working holiday to experience another country, been back a couple of times but after several years away found I didn't fit in any more [all those funny English people!] so here I am!
 

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