Chapter 11 – The Universalist: Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant: “I
have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for
faith.” (page 315)
This quote sticks out to me because I have never found this
to be true, although I can see the logic in it.
Sometimes, in order to be people of faith, we have to ignore things in
the archaeological record to further our belief in the Bible. I have not found this to be the case with my
own religion (Judaism), because there are definite places where Jewish theology
makes room for science and where science makes room for theology, but I know a
bunch of Christians who forsake science for their literal translation of The
Bible. It really doesn’t surprise me
that Kant would also hold this view.
Theodor Adorno: “(T)he
demand for intellectual honesty is itself dishonest… Rather, knowledge comes to
us through a network of prejudices, opinions, innervations, self-corrections,
presuppositions and exaggerations.” (page 317)
This quote stands out to me because it basically says that
humanity is flawed in their intellectual discourse, that because we always
approach it with our own biases and opinions, we can never fully understand
intellectual honesty, because we are never without our predispositions on the
matter. In order to demand intellectual honesty in others, we much first
understand that we are not inherently intellectually honest ourselves. Being
honest about our biases will help us create intellectual honesty in others. In
order to attain new knowledge, we must confront our biases, to be able to
change our own biases and predisposed notions of what is and is not honest.
G. E. Moore: “If I am
asked ‘What is good?’ my answer is that good is good and that is the end of the
matter. Or if I am asked ‘How is good to be defined?’ my answer is that it
cannot be defined and that is all I have to say about it.” (page 322)
I like this quote because it sounds like circular
reasoning. Like most topics in
philosophy, this quote assumes that the philosopher has intellectual biases
(see quote above), so when asked what is good, one must know that the true
answer is that good is good. Obviously,
bad is not good. Only good is good. Asking further, “how can good be defined” one
is again assuming that there is a notion about what is and isn’t good, a
perspective that is only shared by the person asking the question, completely
different from the perspective of the questioned.
Chapter 12 – The Utilitarian: John Stewart Mill
Jeremy Bentham: “I
would have the dearest friend I have to know that his interests, if they come
in competition with those of the public, are as nothing to me. I would serve my
friends – thus I would be served by them.” (page 341)
With this quote, Bentham is stating that the public good is
more important than the singular interests of his friend and that by telling
his friend that the public good is more important, he is a better friend than
the one who would serve the selfish notions of the friend. In Star Trek, Spock
was the recipient of the opposite form of this message, when Kirk and team went
forth to rescue him from the planet Genesis, after finding out that he had been
regenerated. Spock makes discourse to
Amanda Greyson on planet Vulcan after he is rescued and his Katra is back
within him. However, while Kirk
determined that the needs of the few (Spock) outweighed the needs of the few
(Spock), it is necessary to state that in general matters, the needs of the
many outweigh the needs of the few.
John Stuart Mill: “Few,
but those whose mind is a moral blank, could bear to lay out their course of
life on the plan of paying no regard to others except so far as their own
private interest compels.” (page 346)
What this quote says to me is that if the private person’s
interests are aligned with the common good, they will do as the common good
dictates. But when their own interests
do not align with the common good, they’re more inclined to follow their yetzer
hara (“Evil inclination” in Hebrew) than the well intentioned common good. I
don’t know that I buy that people on a social class level are inherently
selfish, but I agree that on a person by person basis, people are selfish. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs state that when a
person has met all of their selfish, base needs, they will then follow in line
socially, but meeting those selfish needs can and does occur prior to meeting
the needs of the common good.
Sarah Conly: “The
truth is that we don’t reason very well, and in many cases there is no
justification for leaving us to struggle with out own inabilities and to suffer
the consequences.” (page 359)
I agree that on a whole, people are not very logical,
rational creatures. I also agree that
it’s rather illogical to let us suffer the ill effects from not being logical
and rationally driven as a species. We
come with emotions, sometimes very BIG emotions, and many psychologists and
philosophers alike have tried to figure out why people can’t just run on logic
all the time. If we could, perhaps we
would live in a utopia where there was no war, no hunger, or homelessness. But as it stands now, when we try to feed our
own selfish desires, we suffer social consequences.
Chapter 13 – The Materialist: Karl Marx
Albert Camus: “The
society of money and exploitation has never been charged, so far as I know,
with assuring the triumph of freedom and justice.” (page 371)
Basically rephrased: “Money makes the world go ‘round.” This
quote is so incredibly present in our day and time because until we are free of
greed, we will never see true freedom or justice. While we have seen many fictional ways in
which an economy can work without currency and greed as we know it, until the
top 1% stops grabbing for as much wealth as they can legally hoard in a
lifetime, we will never know true justice or freedom. We will never see upper middle-class white
boys actually tried for rape and get actual prison sentences because their families
can afford to bribe lady justice.
Friedrich Engels: “The
state is not abolished, it withers away.” (page 372)
The state should, in theory, be made up of a populace whose
trajectory is to allow all of its citizens to prosper, which dictates that
people are helpful and selfless to one another, which (as we have seen in
previous quotes) just isn’t true in modernity. But if the state cannot follow
through on its commitments, it is slowly corrupted and eventually withers into
nothingness. It doesn’t have a standard
start and end by which a new economy rises up and replaces it abruptly. The current model just slowly dies off as the
people who become the state are themselves corrupted and wither away.
Karl Marx, The
Communist Manifesto: “All previous
historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of
minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent
movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.”
(page 381)
If we take a page from American social movements, we notice
that a lot of the movements were based on the minorities rising up and
declaring themselves worthy of equal protection under the law. But Marxism, as described in the Communist
Manifesto, wants to defend the social majority as the ones needing protection
the most. In Soviet Russia (where my
husband and his family are from) there was a push for real Communism in the
beginning before Stalin took over and declared it based on one man rule. However, we see the protections for the
social majority in Soviet Russia, rather than the protections of the minorities
from majority rule (which is what we have here in America).
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Grade: 9/10 (it was late because I had the flu)
Professor Comments: None
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