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In November or December 1970 I went to hear Ayn Rand speak at a college in the Bronx. I believe the Holzers escorted her. At least Henry did. The large auditorium was packed. I went up to the not so crowded balcony. Afterwards during the Q & A a guy asked her if she had ever read any book by Kant. She essentially evaded the question. She did not answer it. I believe she impunged the motives of the questioner. Personally, I think she had read hardly any Kant at all or she could have easily have given an answer both true and complimentary to her knowledge.

--Brant

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I'd like to suggest that anyone interested in Kant's aesthetics start near the back of The Critique of Judgment and read backward section by section. You will find charming examples of his sense of humor, evidence of his clueless, basically Humean understand of music, as well as suggestive passages where he seems to have the gist of Rand's "re-creation of reality" concept of art. I don't mention this as an example of how close they are in toto, because there are obvious differences, but of how ~interesting~, even ~fascinating~, Kant is to read -- not just brain-crackingly difficult as some have alleged. And also as an example of something that what I call the "barking dogs of Objectivism" have tried to scare us away from reading. (Kant being evil, you know, so you should only read him to find evidence of the evil.)

REB

All right, avec moi, le deluge...

I'm going to start some different threads on some of these points.

REB

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> What about the quoted material in the middle of this post...

Roger, I don't see that either of these two (very thin and cryptic) quotes:

“that the object is to be taken in a twofold sense, namely as appearance and as thing in itself” & Kant distinguished experience in general (“outer sense” or perception and “inner experience” or introspection) from imagination, dreams, etc., saying that only the former “depends upon something permanent which is not in me, and consequently can be only in something outside me, to which I must regard myself as standing in relation”

constitute a version or anticipation or a close parallel to the intrinsic-subjective-objective trichotomy as precisely described in Objectivism.

Seriously? Ooooo-kay, here we go....

The first quote: This quite clearly means that an object of awareness can exist in two modes. It exists independently of the knower: Rand's "intrinsic;" Kant's "thing in itself." And it can exist as the object of awareness of the knower: Rand's "objective;" Kant's "appearance."

I trust that the identity of "intrinsic" and "thing in itself" does not need to be belabored.

As far as Kant's "appearance" being the same as Rand's "objective" is concerned, refer to David Kelley's The Evidence of the Senses for his illuminating discussion of perception, in which he explains how form of awareness and appearance of the object are necessarily correlatives in perceptual awareness. Thus, in answer to the question: where does redness exist? Kelley tells us that not only is redness the apple as it appears to me, i.e., an aspect of the way the apple appears to me "in respect of [its] reflectance properties," but redness is also the form in which I am aware of the apple, an aspect “of the means by which [i am] directly aware of those properties.” (Kelley 1986, 111) Perceptual appearance and perceptual form are two forms of the objective, two aspects of the relation of perceptual objectivity.

Kelley’s dual-aspect analysis can be extended to numerous other issues (though he perhaps would demur from my including it as an example of the objective, let alone my further adaptations of it). For instance, think of conceptual units. A unit is an existent as I am aware of it a certain way (i.e., as a member of a group of two or more existents possessing a common characteristic), and a unit is a form in which I am aware of existents. I think this is a very fertile, relatively unexplored part of Objectivism, and much of my recent work (including one JARS essay already published, one more in the editorial stage, and another one in the planning stage) has focused on this dual-aspect nature of the objective. Phil and I have already had some disagreement over the validity or importance of this idea, and I'd be surprised if he has changed his mind.

However, the important thing to note here is that the concept of "appearance" as Kant is using it is equivalent to Rand's concept of "the objective" as applied to the object of perception. So, that is two-thirds of Rand's trichotomy, as exemplified in Kant's distinction between a "thing in itself" and a thing as the object of awareness ("appearance").

The second quote: can it be denied that Rand would agree with Kant? Perception and introspection depend "upon something permanent which is not in me, and consequently can be only in something outside me, to which I must regard myself as standing in relation." That is, perception and introspection depend upon something existing independent and distinct from me, the knower of that thing, and as a knower of that thing, I am in a certain relation to it. It is the object of my awareness, and I hold it as the object of my awareness. Thus, in perception and introspection (Kant's "outer sense" and "inner experience"), there is an ~objective~ relation between knower and known.

Dreams and imagination, on the other hand, are the product of my re-arranging the data of perception and introspection. I am no longer in an objective relation to the things existing independent and distinct from me. I have, whether deliberately or not, severed that relation. I have taken data obtained from that relation, shut down the relation, and put the data into a different order, a non-cognitive order, where I no longer use the data as the means of being aware of something independent of me, but instead as the means of constructing something ~not~ actively involved in being perceptually or introspectively aware. Again, the difference in the verbiage of Kant and Rand/Peikoff aside, the ideas here both denote the "objective" vs. "subjective" distinction.

As I acknowledged (borrowing from Chris Sciabarra's comments), Kant is on shakier epistemological ground for his version of the distinctions (and trichotomy), but -- to me, at least -- the trichotomy is very clearly there, in Kant's writings, in at least embryonic form. He doesn't put it all together as a threefold distinction, like Rand and Peikoff et al do, but unless you are predisposed to reject anything Kant says as either unintelligible and/or vicious and/or false, I don't see how you can fail to recognize the similarity in their ideas in this area.

REB

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However, the important thing to note here is that the concept of "appearance" as Kant is using it is equivalent to Rand's concept of "the objective" as applied to the object of perception. So, that is two-thirds of Rand's trichotomy, as exemplified in Kant's distinction between a "thing in itself" and a thing as the object of awareness ("appearance").

In a memorable Eureka experience in late '64 I was led to the idea of "the relational nature of knowledge" because I'd been reading Kant. ("The relational nature of knowledge" was my way of saying then what I would later find Rand describing as the "objective" nature of knowledge.) I was so struck by the insight, which occurred when I was driving on McCormack Road around one boundary of O'Hare, I nearly drove the car off the road. I'd been studying Kant on "appearance" and "the thing in itself," and I'd kept being nagged at by the feeling that he was right that we aren't perceiving "the thing in itself," that what we perceive results from our perceptual apparatus interacting with the input; but if he was right (this was the problem nagging at me), then how could perception be valid? Same problem which bothered him. In a description I acquired much later from J. Roger Lee, who wrote a paper on the subject, Kant had a standard of knowledge, adopted from earlier thought, which would have required "getting the rock into one's head" in order for us to be confident of our perceptual process. (J. Roger's paper was titled "On Getting the Rock into One's Head.") The insight I came to back in late '64 was that we don't have to be able to see "the thing in itself" in order to be confident of our perceptual process, that the relationship (between our form of perceiving and that which is perceived) IS knowledge, that knowledge is relational.

Kant didn't quite get all the way there, being hampered by his presuppositions; but he came very close. He was on the edge of Rand's idea of the "objective" nature of knowledge.

This is what I was talking about when I said above that my earliest theory about why Rand hated Kant so much was because he came so close to her own theory (and yet it might have seemed to her, so far from that theory, because of his not understanding that the relational nature of knowledge isn't a problem). Later, I became unsure if she realized how close he was, since she apparently acquired her views of what Kant said from secondary sources which might not have been accurate.

Ellen

___

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> unless you are predisposed to reject anything Kant says as either unintelligible and/or vicious and/or false,

Did I say that?

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> unless you are predisposed to reject anything Kant says as either unintelligible and/or vicious and/or false,

Did I say that?

Sorry, Phil. That was the third-person singular "you," as in: "unless one is predisposed to..."

As you (second-person singular) must know, Phil, many Objectivists hold one or more -- though not necessarily all three -- of these things about Kant's ideas. And I don't know another philosophy that explicitly and heavy-handedly harps on the notion that Kant is "the most evil man in history." That doesn't mean I think that ~you~ view Kant that way, but I am speaking to more than just you on this list, including lurkers who do not care to announce themselves and who may well take everything Rand and Peikoff say as "gospel." In response to your post, I was offering my comments to one and all, in an "if the shoe fits, wear it" manner of speaking.

reb

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> unless you are predisposed to reject anything Kant says as either unintelligible and/or vicious and/or false,

Did I say that?

Sorry, Phil. That was the third-person singular "you," as in: "unless one is predisposed to..."

As you (second-person singular) must know, Phil, many Objectivists hold one or more -- though not necessarily all three -- of these things about Kant's ideas. And I don't know another philosophy that explicitly and heavy-handedly harps on the notion that Kant is "the most evil man in history." That doesn't mean I think that ~you~ view Kant that way, but I am speaking to more than just you on this list, including lurkers who do not care to announce themselves and who may well take everything Rand and Peikoff say as "gospel." In response to your post, I was offering my comments to one and all, in an "if the shoe fits, wear it" manner of speaking.

reb

Well, I'm one of those who has spoken up about Kant not being well-understood, and posted one substantial quote from him.

And I do have profound respect for Rand (though I would hardly consider her infallible!). When she says something and I find myself in disagreement - I don't assume I'm wrong, by any means. But I do go back and check my reasoning, because she has a pretty darn good track record. I had the same experience early in my career with W. Edwards Deming (management guy who went to Japan after WWII). When he would say something and I would initially disagree, I would file it away as something to be further studied and understood. Sometimes I decided he was wrong. Sometimes I decided I was. I used to say that he continues to get more intelligent now, over 14 years since his death in December 2003!

As for Peikoff - I appreciate far more his work prior to Rand's death, and in particular some of his stuff on writing, communication, grammar, etc... The history of philosophy is very interesting, though, given this thread, you can see that I don't always see eye to eye with him.

Bill P (Alfonso)

Edited by Bill P
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Ellen:

This is what I was talking about when I said above that my earliest theory about why Rand hated Kant so much was because he came so close to her own theory (and yet it might have seemed to her, so far from that theory, because of his not understanding that the relational nature of knowledge isn't a problem). Later, I became unsure if she realized how close he was, since she apparently acquired her views of what Kant said from secondary sources which might not have been accurate.

Ellen,

It is unfortunate that Rand did not give specific reasons for her view on Kant. Though, she did site Critique of Judgment, his aesthetic thought, as being the example. We might presume that her Romantic Manifesto was a type of antidote to his aesthetics. My close reading of Kant's aesthetics leads me to see they are polar opposites: formlessness vs. integrated whole; subjective "genius" without rhyme or reason vs. thematic resolution; importance of the senses vs. the irrelevancy of the senses for sublimity; and etc.

Where I do think you are right is that they are dealing with similar scope of the importance of ideas on the world stage--she is quite a worthy adversary to him.

Michael

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