18.10.09
Kant and his categories
daisy said,
18.10.09 at 12:15 pm ·
I agree that this is what Bennett wanted to do. Do you think that, though, while his attempted replacement of the categories by the dodecad is dubious, Bennett’s own criticism of Kant’s categories is valid? (as I recall, he calls them something like “optimistic guesses” – I don’t have a copy of the DU available.)
It is easy to criticize Kant, but the results are always off. Thus with Bennett.
The issue arises as to whether Bennett really studied Kant at all??
He has not really understood what Kant was doing with his categories.
daisy said,
19.10.09 at 4:28 pm
Dave Archer, in his Fourth Way Standup, gets very angry about the sentiment expressed in this Gurdjieff quote:
“One may say that evil does not exist for Subjective man at all, that there exist only different conceptions of good. ***Nobody ever does anything deliberately in the interests of evil, for the sake of evil.*** Everybody acts in the interests of good, as he understands it.” (Emphasis Archer’s.)
He thinks it embodies a kind of ethical nihilism being hyponotically forced upon us. I suppose it might have been. But it’s also a very basic statement of the problem of the incompatibility of freedom and determinism. Gurdjieff, “more determinist than the most determinist of the determinists” is logically bound to say that humans, qua machines, have no ethical qualities, since ethics requires the existence of the ability to choose, which in turn implies that determinism is false. No one does anything deliberately in the cause of evil – or good – or anything at all. Because nobody *does* anything.
It’s interesting to me that this philosophical problem ***which we should not also think is a practical problem*** (sceptics don’t leave by the window) seems to be being so abused. First through the insistence that people take it literally, rather than as an interesting problem to do with the logical semantics of scientific and ethical discourses; Second through the suggestion that there actually is is a way out of it, provided you are worthy.
The Gurdjieff Con » Gurdjieff shoots his mouth off said,
19.10.09 at 4:43 pm
[...] Comment on Kant and his categories… This raises a lot of issues we can discuss later. There is not reason this short statement by Gurdjieff should be allowed to stand without challenge, and it has already produced a calamity of New Age Gurfjieff criminals. That’s the danger of the authoritarian system when the ‘authority’ shoots his mouth off. daisy said, 19.10.09 at 4:28 pm · Dave Archer, in his Fourth Way Standup, gets very angry about the sentiment expressed in this Gurdjieff quote: [...]
nemo said,
22.10.09 at 2:47 pm
http://www.davearcher.com/magus.html
the link to Dave Archer, referred to by Daisy