2 comments about Kant on Swedenborg: Dreams of a Spirit-Seer and Other Writings (Swedenborg Studies, No. 13).

1. This work is often described as Kant's most "mysterious". The mystery lies in the fact that here in this treatise the Great Professor of Metaphysics unreservedly admits in the existance of "immaterial natures in the world", i.e. spirits and a spirit world. There is nothing mysterious about this statement, it is just that modern readers refuse to accept it. I've never understood why this should be so hard for some, since Kant's System of critical idealism is perfectly consistent with this view. Kant claimed that we could never know the true nature of the world around us, the true causes of sensations. He always held that there is a real world that we can never accurately know. This real world corresponds with a "spirit world", or if you prefer, a platonic world of Ideals lieing outside of our human perception of time and space. Kant unmistakably states that "We should ... regard the human soul as being conjoined in its present life with two worlds at the same time...." Nothing could be more unambiguous, especially considering his references to the writings of Swedenborg.

   I think that this book has been largely ignored because it is just too divergent from the rational empiracism of the modern scientific mind. The scienitfic materialist conveniently ignores the fundamental questions of material "reality" that Kant couldn't ignore. Furthermore, when the Prussian government banned this work it set into motion the series of events that culminated in the profound physical and spiritual disasters of the 20th cetury- and beyond.
   
   It may yet be proven that the ideas in this forgotten book are far more "real" than the modern materialist concensus of reality....




2. This book is supposed to be the funniest thing that Kant ever wrote, and I really wanted to swim through this book before I tried to figure out what I thought was so funny, but even treading water is a challenge when the current has such a fierce undertow, and the serious "First Part, Which is Dogmatic" demands some consideration, though it ends with the famous prudence which demands "that one make the pattern of one's projects appropriate to one's powers, and if one cannot reasonably attain the great, to restrict oneself to the mediocre." (p. 40). This collection of DREAMS OF A SPIRIT-SEER and other writings from the Swedenborg Foundation Publishers, edited by Gregory R. Johnson, which puts everything that directly related to KANT ON SWEDENBORG into this book, allows a serious consideration of Johnson's view that self-defense was the essence of Kant's approach. Religious controversies had career consequences in those days, and Kant had to show he was laughing "because Swedenborg was a controversial figure. Rumors of interest in Swedenborg would have seriously jeopardized Kant's prospects for academic advancement. This is sufficient motive for him to write a book exculpating himself of the suspicion that he took Swedenborg seriously." (p. xvi). Johnson was writing a doctoral dissertation on Kant the first time he read DREAMS OF A SPIRIT-SEER in 1994, and he cites it in the notes as his COMMENTARY, (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America, 2001). The acknowledgments are dated January 2003 (p. xxvi) and I feel lucky that I received this book as soon as I did.

   I have been thinking about this book for a long time before I wrote this review, since this is the work for which Kant wondered if he had gone too far in jest. My first surprise was that Kant himself (like Hegel, he avoids mentioning names) is not entirely clear about whom he meant to be writing until page 49: "I come now to my purpose, namely, to the writings of my hero." He called his preface "A Prospectus That Promises Very Little for the Project" (p. 3) and the final paragraph of his introduction attempted to make his readers share the situation which he found himself in. "Furthermore, a large work was purchased, and, what is worse still, was read, and such effort should not be wasted. From this originated the present treatise, which, as one flatters oneself, should leave the reader in a state of complete satisfaction, in which the principal part will not be understood, the other not believed, and the remainder laughed at." (p. 4). In general, I approve of the steps Kant took to show a more enlightened view than the journals of his day. The major contrast in Johnson's Introduction is with Johann August Ernesti, who denounced Swedenborg in 1760 as a heretic in his "New Theological Library." For attempting to find meanings in the early books of the Bible which were not obvious, Swedenborg was accused of "pervert[ing] the Sacred Scriptures by the pretense of an inner sense, is in the highest degree worthy of punishment." (p. xxiv). When someone in Wurttemberg published a book on Swedenborg, "at Ernesti's urging, the Wurttemberg government declared the book heretical, confiscated all copies, and even ordered private citizens to surrender their copies on pain of arrest." (p. xxv). When a professor of Theology at Tubingen "urged a more open-minded attitude toward Swedenborg[,] Ernesti responded with yet another scathing review, asserting that Clemm's defense of Oetinger and Swedenborg was an offense that would have been worthy of the death penalty in earlier times." (p. xxv). Kant shows how modern people could be much more philosophical about these things, and though those people are all dead, there is a nice justice in the number of people who are still reading Kant and Swedenborg, even if they hardly know anyone else who does.

   The prime point in the Introduction by Johnson resides deep in personal philosophy, that professional philosophers might understand as, "that Kant's mature critical philosophy is best seen as a synthesis of Rousseauian and Swedenborgian elements (the influence of Leibniz and Hume being primarily upon Kant's elaboration of difficult technical questions once his basic vision was already in place). . . . although Kant's vision of the cosmos is more Swedenborgian than Rousseauian, it is Rousseau who provides the essentially pragmatic arguments that allow Kant to embrace the content of Swedenborg's visions but discard his enthusiasm." (p. xx).

   The notes are helpful. Only a translator is likely to notice, "Here Kant embraces the idea of general as opposed to particular providence." (p. 161, n. 26). This is what makes Kant a philosopher, "the notion that God governs the universe by framing general laws. Particular providence is the notion that he governs the universe on a case-by-case basis." Swedenborg is so religious that he argues "general providence is meaningless without particular providence." There is more on this in Johnson's (as yet, unpublished) COMMENTARY. Kant [Part I, Second Chapter, Paragraph 3] was talking about connections in the immaterial world, the former connections, before getting trapped where "nothing hinders even the immaterial beings that affect one another through the mediation of matter from also standing in a special and constant association and as immaterial beings always exercising reciprocal influences on one another, so that their relationship mediated by matter is only contingent and rests upon particular divine provision, whereas the former is natural and indissoluble." (p. 16)

   I would like to check another translation to see if this is even close to what anyone else would think. In 1992, David Walford and Ralf Meerbote had their translation published in Kant, THEORETICAL PHILOSOPHY, 1755-1770. "Walford's translation is highly accurate and very readable. Indeed, it would be hard to justify a new translation of DREAMS at all were the Walford translation available in an inexpensive paperback edition." (p. xxiii). It soon might be, if that is what you would rather have.

1 comments about Thomas Kuhn (Contemporary Philosophy in Focus).

1. Writers like Kuhn and Polanyi's subjectivistic approach to science are still popular in some circles, mostly because of the west's fascination with individual consciousness and the existential and phenomenological approaches to reality that grew out of that. While this is understandable historically I believe that this approach is still invalid, so I thought I'd say a little about that. But that will involve my discussing some basic philosophical history, so I hope you don't mind if I wax a little nerdy there.
   
   Basically, the most important concept in epistemology is the split between the philosophies of idealism and empiricism. Idealists believe that ideas about the external world are innate. Kant was the last major philosopher to articulate the classical position on this, and his influence is still being felt by contemporary neo-Kantian theories and philosophers. For example, Kant mantained that the ideas of space and time were so fundamental that they had to be built-in, innate ideas. He argued that the test of this is that if one can't imagine a universe without a certain idea, then that idea couldn't have come from external reality. While this is an interesting contention, and there is some support for it (perceptual psychologist Eleanor Gibson showed that even at 1 year of age babies can perceive depth and space very well, in her famous "visual cliff" experiments), it is unlikely that there are truly innate ideas, although there are probably innate abilities like Kant suggested, since as he pointed out, in order for the mind to be actively involved in organizing and structuring the data of the senses, this could not occur unless there were corresponding mental capabilities and constucts to match.
   
   But getting back to the philosophy definitions, as many people know, Locke, Hume, and most of the British philosophers were empiricists; they believed that ideas come from sense data and from external reality. This philosophical split between idealism and empiricism in thinking goes all the way back to Aristotle and Plato, so if you understand what it was about, you basically understand what most of western philosophy was about since then. The one exception here is the British philosopher Berkeley, who was an extreme subjectivist, and his philosophy is known as solipsism. He actually thought that the external world only existed because we perceived it, making it an extreme form of idealism. He did this by arguing that since we ultimately only know our own minds and its consciousness and internal perceptions, that there is no real way to prove that an objective, external reality even exists. While there is some truth to this, it's obviously an extreme position, and as result of recent research over the last 30 years in the neurophysiology and biophysics of sensation and perception, as in the case of David Marr's mathematical and theoretical work and his followers, we know now just how rigorous and analytical the process of perceiving external reality actually is.
   
   Hence, there is very little reason anymore to insist on the fundamental subjectivity of perception in the Kantian sense. It is true that there are visual illusions at the higher levels of sensory perception, but those are now regarded as special cases, and they are being shown to be explainable in terms of mathematical visual field- distortion theories of these mechanisms that can be quantified just like the basic sensory processes.
   
   But getting back to what I was saying before, Kant's view is still popular in some circles, and actually, he was right about certain things, such as the mind having certain built-in capabilities to understand reality, as I mentioned above in the case of idealism. The linguist, Noam Chomsky, and his ideas about an innate language capability are an example of this neo-Kantian approach, actually, which has been supported by developmental studies and by studies of feral children in regard to a critical period between 6 and 8 years of age, which is required for language developement.
   
   However, most scientists and philosophers since the early 20th century are probably either Logical Positivists or Critical Naturalists rather than Idealists or neo-Kantians in the strict sense. The problem with neo-Kantianism is that a systematic ghost of an illusion pervades even the finest specimens of this theory, since there is no strong connection to external reality anymore. Both Critical Naturalism and Logical Positivism were strongly influenced by scientific theories about reality, and Logical Positivism is really just the philosophy and analysis of scientific method and of the logic of scientific hypothesis and theories rather than traditional philosophy in the usual sense. Some of the famous Logical Positivists were people like Rudolf Carnap, A.J. Ayer, and Reichenbach, whose names many people know. Critical Naturalism does get more into traditional philosophical topics like metaphysics and ontology but again, they tend to take their ideas about reality from what science has discovered in quantum theory and cosmology and what that implies as far as figuring out the metaphysics and ontology of the real world.
   
   Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell were two famous 20th century philosophers who were examples of the Critical Naturalism school, and both of them were mathematicians as well as philosophers. Whitehead was Russell's math professor, and in fact, they both wrote a famous work on mathematical logic, The Principia Mathematica, in which they show that the basic mathematical operations can be derived from logic.
   
   Since we're on the subject, I thought I'd make several comments specifically on Kuhn's theory as set forth in his famous book, the Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn's idea qualifies as a psychohistorical explanation of the nature of scientific progress, because scientists must have already made a cognitive shift to a new mindset before acceptance of the new theory can occur.
   
   Other people have commented on similar ideas in the works of Feyerabend, Popper, and Polanyi, so I won't repeat any of that here. What I will say, however, is that this theory, while interesting, makes as little, or as much sense, itself, as the irrational science it purports to explain.
   
   First, Kuhn's explanation of the process seems plausible psychologically but in fact is not supported by the psychological literature itself. People change deeply held convictions and ideas not because of an external paradigm shift, but because they become convinced internally that the new idea is superior to the old. Why? Because it explains the facts better, makes more powerful predictions, or is simpler. In other words, it is a fairly logical, reasonable process. This should surprise no-one but Kuhn.
   
   Second, Kuhn's theory ignores the innumerable scientific hypotheses, theories, and advances that displaced earlier explanations with very little or no resistance.
   
   Third, Kuhn misinterprets the initial resistance to Einstein's Theory of Relativity. The real problem with the acceptance of this theory is that when it made its debut (especially in the case of Einstein's General Theory), few physicists themselves could even understand the mathematics and physics involved. Ignorance should not be confused with scientific irrationalism or just stubborn refusal to accept the truth.
   
   Well, I hope you didn't mind my little philosophy digression, but I thought I'd make a few comments about the evolution of these ideas since Kuhn and Polanyi's ideas are best understood in the context of the development of philosophical ideas over the last several centuries.

No comments about Nietzsche As Postmodernist, Essays Pro and Contra (Suny Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy).

No comments about Jean Baudrillard: In Radical Uncertainty (Modern European Thinkers).

No comments about The Story of My Misfortunes.

1 comments about A Life for the Spirit : Rudolf Steiner in the Crosscurrents of Our Time (Vista Series, V. 1) (Vista Series).

1. Although I read this book a couple of years ago, it still stands out in my mind as exceptional and outstanding. It is comprehensive in its coverage of Steiner's ideas and work, and for a person approaching the ideas of anthroposophy for the first time, it is the perfect introduction to the man behind it all. I found the book to be much clearer on Steiner than Steiner's own writings. I was nineteen when I read the book so I will recommend that especially young people interested in Steiner get this book. When I finished reading it I was in awe of how much Rudolf Steiner accomplished in his life and the sheer number of fields of knowledge (philosophy, science, medicine, education, art, agriculture, religion) he contributed to. The book is very well written and inspired me to look more deeply into Steiner's philosophy and his work.

No comments about Georges Bataille (Critical Lives).

No comments about Mahatma Gandhi: Autobiografia.

1 comments about The Selected Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

1. This book somewhat gives a different view of what Emerson was like away from being the literature giant that he is...if that sounds interesting to you then you should get this book.

1 comments about Descartes, Bacon, and Modern Philosophy (World of Philosophy).

1. It wil open your mind and your eyes to a whole new world. The concepts in this book is what modern philosophy is based on! It is as painful as a root canal to read but if you can read a fully comprehend the concepts you have achived more than you can ever imagine. I was truly blown away!