Yes, but that is because Kant had no other choice, when given the skeptical premises of the naturalist philosophers. All of what we know comes from experience. This is common sense; Hume, Locke, etc. made it clear and showed with force how this is so. Yet this is the premise that forced Kant - and God - into the box of the metaphysical. For the extent to which anything we can know from experience (and not apriori) requires an ability, even hypothetical to experience and verify. Kant justified faith with reason, or rather justified kinds of "necessary truths" akin to faith as based on reason, yet by using philosophic reason as the axiom; just as Auqinas and the scholastics justified faith with reason, yet the scholastics took faith itself as axiomatic.
Faith is the Will to Believe. The Will to be Wise. We've lost that and only the Will to Power remains. But there are 3 wills: The Will to Power (existence), Will to Knowledge (Faith,Reason) and Will to Virtue. The philosophers havent figured that out yet (I have).
And yet is Kant so wrong? If God works miracles, physical miracles, then he is part of the world, and we can experience him. If he works only through the laws of nature, then we can only experience him through that veil of nature. The modern critique of Kant is not to release God from metaphysics, but to dissolve the metaphysical entirely. "The Remnant" of Christian faith holds on to but a plot of barren land holding out against materialism, and the positivists and existentialists are ready to evict.
The real culprit in history has been the rationalist faith in ideas - pure ideas - as something real and with more meaning than experience. This was the heart of Plato's rationalism, and was carried on by philosophers after Descartes. After him and into the 20th century, the post-Christian rationalists created ideologies immune to empirical inspection yet without the goodness of Christian virtue.
It is a good article and a good retort. And yet the fineness of Christians past and mean-ness and danger of atheistic ideologies is not an argument that addresses the core truth of the matters.
I liked the comment of Blaise Pascal. We feel what is possible but we cannot experience it. Perhaps he saw it before many of us, the denouement of irreligion and its dissolution of hope in the human spirit. But how to recapture that? You can only fight philosophy with philosophy, truth with truth. That means a defense of the proper sort, attending to matters of knowledge, virtue and existence.
Whether they know it or not, every human being has a philosophy they live by, and a large number of individuals live, in part, to their personal religious philosophy.
It is also a fact that certain religious philosophies have proven themselves evil -- the evil within the 9/11 attack, for instance, has a religious base.
As for where we encounter philosophy? Each sentient being is engaged in its pursuit from his first waking hour, after coming into this world. We just get a little better at the pursuit as we grow towards adult hood. Thereafter, some continue to get better at the pursuit--that is called wisdom;--but many get set in certain mental traps, and stagnate. The worst of those mental traps--because it not only causes mental stagnation, but a neurotic rejection of truth itself--is what we call "Liberalism" today--that Socialist denial both of the realities of human life, and the awesome nature of the Creation (the Natural Laws that govern all objects, animate and seemingly inanimate).
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
This very same thing demonstrates itself on threads about trade here at FR. One would easily find statements against those who have money and speak and/or think strictly in terms of class warfare. Envy and covetousness are the root of such thought.
For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.
Psalms 23:7
Everything that is wrong with philsophy is, "religion," or at least the fundamental principle of religion, mysticism.
When mysticism, (so-called knowledge that has no rational or evidential basis), is embraced, it is superstition. No one calls it superstition, however, they call it faith.
Men so despise the truth and reality, they will do anything rather than give up their superstitions, including corrupting their own philosophy.
| Mankind, generally hates reality, just because mankind does view reality as ruthless, demanding, cruel, and unforgiving. What mankind wishes for is a reality that is pliable, easy-going, kind, and forgiving. At bottom, mankind hates reality, hates the necessity of having to work hard all the time, hates the necessity of having to learn so much, hates never being able to act on whim, or passion, or impulse without consequences, hates knowing they cannot do wrong and get away with it, hates knowing you cannot get something for nothing. What mankind wants is exemption from consequences and a shortcut to success, wealth, happiness, or whatever else their current whims and fancies convince them they want. Reason does not show them how to have or achieve what they want the way they want it. Reason only enables them to understand the truth that describes reality as it is. They don't want truth, either. The truth just condemns them for their hate of reality. They hate the truth, too. Here, finally, is the secret, that unrevealed factor, the mystery of why almost all men prefer their superstitions to the truth. At the heart of all superstitious beliefs, sometimes explicit, but always implicit, is the promise that there is something more than reality, something above reality, something which cancels the requirements of reality, a secret that enables those who know it to rise above mere reality, to defy it and get away with it. Superstition, which is never called superstition, is a magic wand that makes exist what in reality cannot exist, a metaphysical wild card that makes one automatically a winner, the universal "get-out-of-jail-free" card that allows one to escape the consequences of their choices and actions, the flying carpet that defies all of reality to give its owner a free ride to success and happiness.
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(Quote is from The Autonomist, "What is Superstition")
Hank