Musing on human mind and kant

 

Adaptation from book by Paul Guyer.

Paul Guyer has released from his creative and critical faculties series of books on Kant, because of this he can be called a Kant Scholar. Upon countering Kant one comes in line with his vocabulary as telelogical power, aesthetic power, reason, morality, freedom, and a  most profuse "critique" among many others. What is Kant up to when he is critiquing? Critique of pure reason. Critique of practical reason. Critique of power of judgement. What are the items of arguments he wants to present. I think I should indulge in intertextulity and buoy myself to read Sophie’s world to get in touch with how Jostein Gaarder deals Kant rhetorically and pedagogically. Intertextuality is a buzz word in the realm of theory. Does intertextuality mean the way I tried to use here? As keats would say,  My business is to question and try to read and think and most importantly revise and retrive. Retrive means trying to answer from memory only.  

 

 You should not write to create stress in short term memory of human mind. Short term memory is pretty weak and hates new knowledge, While Long term memory is vast and receptive of idea, detail and knowledge. The road from short-term memory to long term memory is thin and minuscule. We are just trying to understand basic ideas of Kant. This is not easy proposition for short term memory as Robert Bjork would posit. 

 

In Donald Trumps lingo, Justin Garder earned “ a lot, trust me a lot of money” selling Sophie’s world.

It is meant to be understandable for even school students, ideas of philosophy cut out beautifully pedagogically and rhetorically and turned into a work of art also relevant for young minds. May be because of this, this book is an international best-seller.

 

I don’t  know the reason, but I find Sophie’s world not too easy and accessible for myself that is.

 

We are reading Kant. We have till yet, not discussed a single idea. Just do not try to understand anything, just read on.  

 

Sophie’s World is written in narrative style. What would have happened if  this book mixed two methods of essay and Narration?

 

A noteworthy biological information regarding Kant could be that he wrote most of his great works, for people who fathom and understand him, after he was more than fifty years of age. Did he make age  fifty great again?

 

Sophie’s world begins on Kant with his year of birth, 1724.

 

Before elaborating  Kant through Sophie’ World treatment , I  want to retrive from my memory what I know about him. Donald Trump would say, “ that guy had lot of mind, trust me, he was great, guy was something.”  Kant was a rationalist. He says mind as a structure of reason. He associated idea of rationality with idea of morality and idea of freedom. Kant was always in communication with idea of empiricism and idea of hardbound rationality what were the engine of knowledge that were running in the 1750 era. I cannot go on an explanation spree regarding empiricism and harbound rationlity as of now, I have to grasp those ideas with more firmness and command. I do not know much of empiricism and hard-variety rationalism. Nietzsche would call both empiricism and strict rationalist based philosophers vegetables. Nietzche was born in 1844. Revision: Kant was born in 1724. What was Nietzche's take on ideas of Kant?

 

Now I am reading bit of Sophie’s world.

 

Sophie’s world says Kant died at the age of eighty. Recently I come figure that father of essayist, poet Laxmi Prasad Devkota lived a harmonious life till he was in his eighties. That is he lived a long and solid life. That was a novel information for me. Sophie's  World divulges  Kant was a Professor of Philosophy. Kant had a solid grounding in the philosophical grounding of the past. Sophie’s world reveals, “he was familiar both with the rationalism of Descartes and Spinoza and the empiricism of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume.”

 

Sophie in the novel retorts “I asked you not to mention Berkeley again.” 

Donald Trump would say with a pointed eye “ I asked you not to mention (f- word)  Twitter again.”

  The question that was hounding Philosphers since Descartes was what we can know of this world, and what is that which is beyond our understanding. 

The poet Javed Akhter calls himself a fierce rationalist. He had a nasty exchange with so-branded sadh guru which is in youtube for public reception. I would love to find out what Noam Chomsky method of reasoning would say of  Kants ideas and interests. May be he would say, “ I would not be interested in those questions.”

 

 David Hume was an important figure in Kant’s philosophical journey. It is said that Hume aroused Kant in his fifties from  a deep slumber. Can Kant be metonomically connected with Kumbhakarna. I learned this term metonomy from sri Arun Gupto.

 

Bascially Kant and other philosohpers were asking important questions about the nature of mind, nature of external world, how external world is connected to internal world, nature of thinking, nature of emotion, nature of ideas that drives us. This was a time before French Revolution and Sri William Wordsworths. Did Kant drink alcohol? Philosopher Derrida was interested in sexual lives of the great philosophers. How were larger  religious institution operating in the 1750s without the services of Sri Donald Trump and Sri Narendra Modi and late Julfikar ali bhutto.

 

Kant said that there are certain condition that affects the mind which determines how we see the world and people and animals and nature. Sophie asks “ What kind of conditions?.” Here Kant uses terms as phenomena, intuition, time and space to explain this concept. Kant is saying that mind operates in layers. We cannot escape the first layer which directs our experience. What is the first layer? This first layer of mind for kant makes us Homo sapiens. That is similarity of people of India to Namibia to London to New York to Bihar to Tamil Nadu despite have different experiences in Life. It is said that Kant opened new dimensions in ideas of Philosophy.