Enough Apologies

I haven't read the speech, but I am not all that impressed by someone who quotes Kant, I have heard plenty of speeches where Kant is quoted, generally like all quotations to substantiate one's political or emotionally charged opinion. While I don't think much of some things Kant said, especially in his one of his shorter essays "Odservations on the Beautiful and the Sublime" he at least struggled with the formulation of a secularly-based morality. He also wrote some things that were to my way of thinking just plain wrong. But he was writing against some of the recieved and accepted wisdom of his time as we all do, and as such was trapped in that wisdom as we all are. Here is what I believe the speech was about from what I have heard, those of you who have actually read the speech (in its original German) can enlighten me on where I have it all wrong as I am sure, for better or worse you will. Actually, the premise of the speech is irrational, but more of that later. The argument that the pope was making according to what I have read is that the religion of Islam and the writings of Mohammad are both inherently violent at their core and that there is something terribly amiss if religion is used in the pursuit of violence. While I tend to agree with the latter aspect of the pope's diquisition there is nothing new or espcially revealing in what he said there, Bob Dylan said the same thing poetically in the mid sixites in a little anti-reloigious anti-war song called "God on Our Side"! I'm not sure what most people think about Catholicism but as I have already noted the Jesuits, who once fondly referred to themselves as "the Soldiers of Christ" pursued violenct means in spreading Catholicism around the globe. So perhaps as I said before I would be more apt to admonish the learned Pope to clean up his own laundry first before airing the laudry of others.

Oh, yeah about the irrationality of the idea that anything is inherently this or that, religion like everything humans have created is more or less a tool, and as such can be used by anyone for any purpose, most statements, even small notes by Nietzsche, as Derrida was prone to demonstrate are ambiguous, and can be read in any number of ways, even some words as Derrida was also prone ot demonstrate have meanings that are oposed to each other. To claim in light of what we know about the workings of langauge that any writings or the establishment of any religion is any more or less inherently violent than any other religion or any other group of people is silly and can never be substaniated, moreover it harkens back to that period of time not too long ago when we believed that certain races of people had certain "inherent" characteristics and is therefore not only wrong but sort of distasteful and one really sort of shudders to think that the leader of one of the world's major religions would still be making this sort of flawed argument, no matter how "heady"!
 
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Where exactly in my little response did I say specifically that I didn't like Kant?

You didn't it seemed to be implied. You aren't impressed by someone who quotes Kant. I suppose that doesn't automatically mean you dislike Kant's ideas but the post you made framed it in such a way.
 

I do call people all the time on thier statements. Like this one you made Ihate.

Having fun Toby? I still stand by my belief that you don't know any Muslims. You saying I don't have absolute proof of this is only cementing my ideas.

I believe a man more who when accused of something he didn't do says they didn't do it than a man who when accused asks for the evidence against him.

Usually the guilty do that. You seem guilty.
 
So using your logic Ihate, you love to suck stranger dicks in public rest rooms because you haven't proved that you don't.
 
Again Toby I at least say that I don't. You have not even denied what I have said.

Also you don't even have one small piece of evidence for what you said.

I at least have the nature of what you said to lead me to the conclusion I made.

Big difference.

Generally anyone who says that all of any groups are a certain way doesn't actually know any members of the group they speak about personally. Especially such an absolute statement as saying there are no good Muslims anywhere in all the world.
 
I don't need to deny what you said, you have to prove a specific statement that you made. I made a general statement, yours was very specific about me. There is a difference. You are not that stupid to not be able to understand it. Stop playing stupid, you are smarter than that, I think.
 
Don't deny is then.

Failure to deny can often be seen as confirmation though. I have shown my point. Your statement alone is evidence enough. At this point you need to counter my evidence.

If you do not I have more evidence that I am right than you do that I am wrong.

You making such a statement is all the evidence I need. You have to convince me now.

This isn't a court trial. I am simply expressing my opinion about you that is backed up by something you said yourself. You haven't convinced me my opinion is invalid. I don't require ironclad evidence to have an opinion about anything.

You have less evidence than that to say that there are no good Muslims.
 
IHateGovernment said:
Where exactly in my little response did I say specifically that I didn't like Kant?

You didn't it seemed to be implied. You aren't impressed by someone who quotes Kant. I suppose that doesn't automatically mean you dislike Kant's ideas but the post you made framed it in such a way.
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Here we go again. This was Derrida's main point or at least a part of it. When I said I wasn't impressed by people who quoted Kant, I also said that I had heard plenty of other people quote him. In other words, I want' referring to being impressed or unimpressed with Kant's ideas, but not necessarily being all that impressed with people who quoted him simply because they quoted him. For me the highest compliment I can pay to anyone anywhere is that they struggled with ideas and how to express them. I certainly pay Kant that compliment here. Further I am not at all surprised that the Pope would quote Kant in a speech on the "inherent" qualities of something, religious or not, Kant certainly spent a great deal of time trying to ascertain what is inherent in all of us and what is learned. In many ways in the his first critique, the Critique of Pure Reason he is trying to establish inherent or "a priori" categories that organize our thoughts and as he says . He is specifically engaging Hume and Locke, and the idea that the mind is a blank slate and that everything we know we have learned. He engages these ideas on a very deep level, and some would say with a good deal of wordiness and not a little confusion. But he does engage them and as I noted struggle with them on a very high level. My problem is more with the argument than with the man, who I hardly knew, he having lived in the late 1700s and me in the late 1900s. I do agree with some things he writes. I certainly agree with this statement as my repeated admonitions about being trapped in our time will attest: "[E]ither I must assume that the concepts, by means of which I obtain this determination [of the constitution of an object of the senses], conform to the object, or else I assume that the objects, or what is the same thing, that the experience in which alone, as given objects, they can be known conform to the concepts." (italics in original) I find that latter assumption to be exactly the case all too often. But, whether or not I would say that the concepts with which we perceive the objects are in fact a priori to any and all experiences is what I take exception to. I prefer Vico's idea that the only things we can know are the things we have created and Hegel's idea that we are historical beings, to (to completely bowdlerize and reduce Kant) the idea that we are inherently this or that or that we are born with certain categories hard wired into our little brains that make us or even enable us to organize and think about things in certain ways.


Is that better for you...??????? by which I mean does it clarify my position regarding my perceived dislike of Kant????? I don't really know how Mill plays into this at all...perhaps you could explain what you meant by that remark, please.
 
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toby said:
So using your logic Ihate, you love to suck stranger dicks in public rest rooms because you haven't proved that you don't.
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This is the sign of a bored person who has lost track of what he is arguing about and can come up with no other examples than those exhibited by and reflective of his own selfish desires.
 
Ok Ok good response. I never meant that you personally disliked his ideas. My comment was mainly because I perceive you as a relativist and I found it amusing you it seemed you didn't like Kant's ideas since we have argued before and I value many of Kant's ideas.

I wasn't trying to make a huge deal out of it.

As for John Stuart Mills his idea of utilitarianism is often cited as a foil for Kant's categorical imperitive.
 
IHateGovernment said:
Ok Ok good response. I never meant that you personally disliked his ideas. My comment was mainly because I perceive you as a relativist and I found it amusing you it seemed you didn't like Kant's ideas since we have argued before and I value many of Kant's ideas.

I wasn't trying to make a huge deal out of it.

As for John Stuart Mills his idea of utilitarianism is often cited as a foil for Kant's categorical imperitive.
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Only by those who do not understand either Kant or Mill....in fact the two ideas are not in any way antithetical.
 
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