Vox Day has a thoughtful riposte to my review of his Jordanetics. He says that Kant was wrong:
And the fundamental fact of our time is the notion from Werner Heisenberg that the 20th century physics revolution means that the really real, deep down at the micro level, cannot be described by every-day notions by which we talk about the every day world as we experience it moment to moment. So we have to fake it with the likely stories of atoms and quarks and stuff by which we try to understand the math through metaphor.
Nor does Vox Day put any faith in Jung:
I was talking to a math-whiz acquaintance a few months ago, and opined that in due course the physicists would come up with a theory of reality that goes deeper than quantum mechanics and its present account of energy and mass. He agreed. So what is objectively real? What we know today, or what we will know tomorrow?
And that is, for me, the meaning of Kant. He is just saying: don't think that you've got the final word on the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Just remember that all we know are sense impressions and the story we have made up to make sense of them. Assume that the thing-in-itself is still a mystery.
Whether the real is real, or just an phantasm, no human can go far wrong by accepting that he still has a lot to learn.
For me there's a bigger thing going in with Kant and Jung and Peterson. And it is this. "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers," through thinkers like Kant and Jung, and even Peterson, are starting to develop a theory of the meaning of life, the universe and everything that can show up the left as the shallow, reactionary, and cramped movement it is, that makes a god out of politics and power, instead of going beyond politics and the lust for power, given that the market economy has provided a means where humans can negotiate practically everything through trust and exchange rather than battle to the death over the exclusive right to a food-growing patch of land, which has been the fate of mankind since the dawn.
I think that ideas like my reductive Three Peoples theory and the notion of the sacrificial hero in Jung provide a means of developing a higher and better concept of human meaning than the cruel leftist faith in politics and force, and a better way of showing up its barren world view as an utterly futile and foolish fantasy.
And I think that Jordan B. Peterson's revival of meaning for the life of the responsible person in 12 Rules is a first step.
And the only thing you need to know about Kant is that he was wrong, completely and utterly wrong. His entire life's work was an unnecessary attempt to square a philosophical circle. The objective truth exists regardless of our ability to correctly perceive it at any given point in time.Well, yes. The objective truth, or Kant's ẗhing-in-itself, presumably does exist independently of our ability to perceive it. But Kant's point is that, whatever really exists, we don't know what it is, and cannot directly know it, the things-in-themselves, because we only experience appearances. The immense cunning of Kant's idea (whether it is right or wrong) is that we should never assume that we have arrived at a complete understanding of anything. All we ever know is that we have a pretty good grasp of things, thus far. Hence Thomas Kuhn and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
And the fundamental fact of our time is the notion from Werner Heisenberg that the 20th century physics revolution means that the really real, deep down at the micro level, cannot be described by every-day notions by which we talk about the every day world as we experience it moment to moment. So we have to fake it with the likely stories of atoms and quarks and stuff by which we try to understand the math through metaphor.
Nor does Vox Day put any faith in Jung:
And the Jungians are not merely wrong, they are mad. That's not you make sense of the world. That's not how you make sense of anything.In my view, all Jung is doing is starting with the notion that all religions and all accounts of the really real are the accounts of blind men encountering an elephant. It's a trunk. It's a big flappy ear, etc. But what is it, really? Well Jung -- and Peterson -- say that all religions are attempts to understand the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, given the state of human knowledge at the time. Therefore they are reprising the same old themes, but shining a new light as human knowledge and expertise expands.
I was talking to a math-whiz acquaintance a few months ago, and opined that in due course the physicists would come up with a theory of reality that goes deeper than quantum mechanics and its present account of energy and mass. He agreed. So what is objectively real? What we know today, or what we will know tomorrow?
And that is, for me, the meaning of Kant. He is just saying: don't think that you've got the final word on the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Just remember that all we know are sense impressions and the story we have made up to make sense of them. Assume that the thing-in-itself is still a mystery.
Whether the real is real, or just an phantasm, no human can go far wrong by accepting that he still has a lot to learn.
For me there's a bigger thing going in with Kant and Jung and Peterson. And it is this. "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers," through thinkers like Kant and Jung, and even Peterson, are starting to develop a theory of the meaning of life, the universe and everything that can show up the left as the shallow, reactionary, and cramped movement it is, that makes a god out of politics and power, instead of going beyond politics and the lust for power, given that the market economy has provided a means where humans can negotiate practically everything through trust and exchange rather than battle to the death over the exclusive right to a food-growing patch of land, which has been the fate of mankind since the dawn.
I think that ideas like my reductive Three Peoples theory and the notion of the sacrificial hero in Jung provide a means of developing a higher and better concept of human meaning than the cruel leftist faith in politics and force, and a better way of showing up its barren world view as an utterly futile and foolish fantasy.
And I think that Jordan B. Peterson's revival of meaning for the life of the responsible person in 12 Rules is a first step.
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