Crash Course in Kant

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 The thinking of Kant is famous for its difficulty. And it is true that the first encounter with his famous Critiques can result in considerable bewilderment. It is not our task here to explicate Kant's critical system, but our eonic model impinges on something directly related to Kant's thinking. It might therefore prove useful to approach Kant indirectly in this fashion, letting an example of the use of Kant in practice provide an intuitive framework for a future course of study. 

The study of Kant requires a kind of bootcamp, and a detailed course, perhaps in an academic setting, can be definitely recommended. But the opportunity for that is not easy to come by. For what we are up to here, a minimal approach is entirely adequate. Keep in mind that the first edition of WH&EE was written using only the first paragraph of Kant's essay on history, and even the full text of the essay was avoided, to preempt 'cribbing' notes. The result was very fortunate, and almost the entire system of Kant sprang to life as a single idea. The final match of the eonic model to Kantian thinking is the more remarkable, since no effort was made to actually use Kant's formulation. We stumble into it backwards. Kant's basic insights will suddenly stand out and hit you like a ton of bricks. 

It is not surprising that this should happen. As Schopenhauer discovered the disguised resemblance of Kant's thinking to, for example, the Upanishadic sutras, thence to some universal evolutionary psychology of man freed from mystical degenerations, is no accident. What is surprising to find that history itself reflects the structure of the Kantian formulation. 

 In general, the difficulty of Kant therefore is exaggerated, the problem arising because a set of abstractions takes over and gets subjected to hairsplitting analysis without a grasp of the fundamentals. That's a problem Kant students must solve for themselves, and our 'crash course' can be something simpler, and 'cash and carry' on the way to a study of historical theory. Sometimes it helps to nibble on a small bite. Then, reflecting on that, the rest will come alive. So, 

1. Reflect on the first paragraph of Kant's essay on history. 

2. Read the Prefaces to his first Critique, and simply review the Table of Contents, and the main sections. 

The issue there is that of metaphysics! To produce a science of history and/or evolution we must have a science of metaphysics. Without such a science the question of a science of history and/or evolution is up in the air, no such sciences. Period. We can agree or disagree with Kant, understand or misunderstand him, but his starting point should at least be clear. 

3.Approach Kant via his famous antinomies.

Kant studies tend to get sidetracked by the beautiful but tricky issues at the beginning of his first Critique, i.e. of space-time geometry, the various deductions, especially the super puzzle of the transcendental deduction, the Analogies, etc,,,. But there was always a different back door entrance to Kant via the so-called Dialectic (Schopenhauer is a good example of someone whose intuition was awakened by this indirect approach). Once again we find here what seems to be Kant's starting point. There we meet the famous antinomies, the so-called Third Antinomy being once again the key for us. Note the similarity to the text we have cited from his essay on history. 

4. Approach Kant historically. Start with a short secondary source surveying Kant's system (e.g. Korner's Kant), and/or his place in the history of philosophy. 

Survey the terrain from Descartes to Kant,  then the terrain of Kant's critical system, and its historical development. Here the issues get complex. Simply note and explore the facticity of the progression of his three critiques, and the historical place of his Third Critique. Note the problem that arises in the relationship of the first and second critiques, and how the question of teleology emerges there in the context of so-called constitutive versus regulative judgments.   

The phenomenon/noumenon distinction, so rarely understood, pops out of the woodwork in our approach, using different concepts, so if you brains are addled by abstruse books on the Thing-In-Itself, you have come to the right place.  

That's it. From there devise your own continuation.  

This approach will soon lead to a need and/or desire for deeper study, occasion permitting. 

The rationale for this historical approach is remarkable: in our eonic model, like in Lisp programming, data and theory are the same thing! So Kant's system is part of our historical data, whether we understand him or not! His appearance inside the eonic system, along with the history of philosophy generally, is part of the pattern of the eonic effect, and we get a beautiful surprise. You don't need to be a Kant expert to see the point here. But this point will take time to see, and pertains more to the eonic model than to Kant's thinking per se. 

Kant is difficult, yes, but since the subject is about what you don't know, there is a simple way to proceed! Simple awareness that Kant's cautionary review of the issues of divinity, soul, and free will exists at all is the way to start, and simple historical awareness here would go a long way to forestall the almost unbelievable amnesia in the way in which evolutionary Darwinism has fallen into the traps Kant mapped out. So read the Preface to Kant's critique and you have enough to start working on our eonic model. 

From Epistemology to History
There is one catch here,  which is actually the point of what we are up to here, which is that our subject is history, not epistemology, and we are forced to reinvent Kant for history. That's a dangerous thing to do so we will try to make our strategy transparent. That strategy lies in the direct resemblance of a two-level eonic model to the Third Antinomy itself, but this time a temporal version applies to the eonic effect! This produces in short order a simplified 'evolution of freedom' argument, one with powerful backing from the historical data. The epistemology we use to study history is, of course, an essential issue, and should be informed by Kant's thinking on that point. But the point is that we are jumping into a new question, that of the classic Big History riddle, at risk of historicism, in Popper's phrase. We can't apply Newton's three laws directly to this phenomenal history. 

Confusion can arise here because Kant's system arises in the context of Newton and his physics. But that won't work on history, although the formal gesture of trying that anyway is useful as we set up the eonic model. Then, later, causality becomes 'eonic determination' and 'free will' 'optionality' (determinate choices) or what we call 'free action and its degrees of self-consciousness'. 

Don't get put off by the anti-Kant reaction of later, now current, times Pragmatism set in motion a harsh critique of Kant, and of foundationalism, but with what result? Now Darwin is the foundationalist! Darwinism violates all three of the antinomies we have indicated. A fool and his money are soon parted. So be wary of these later continuations (we could easily construct our own pragmatist post_Kantian Kantianism). Nietzsche included. Kant hit a home run, however disconcerting it might be to see positivistic scientific methodology as a Kantian decline. Kant designed his system to complete science, not as anti-science.  

The realization that Kant was righter than he knew and that his thinking applies to history, beyond the range of his basically psychological and epistemological investigation, the self and its representations, is the actual reason we have started with his essay on history, this essay being written just after the first critique. 

Kant must have been wondering how to adapt his system to historical analysis, and the first paragraph of his essay hits the nail on the head by posing the basic issue/paradox directly. Kant seems to equivocate between asocial sociability, and the need to find some explicit teleological method. We are close to a difficult issue, and the great tragedy of theory. Note that this is a case of teleological ambiguity, precisely that indicated by Kant himself. 

But, armed with the eonic model, we can see at once the way to reconcile teleology and mechanism via 'eonic directionality', with the beautiful data to match.  We can at least create an empirical map in the short range observed of directional intermittency.  

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