All Quotes By Tag: Kant

“Kant in fact offers four distinct arguments in defence of the necessity and importance of examples in the moral life of human beings. First, examples play a necessary role in the moral education of young people, for the immature human mind is not yet able to apply abstract moral principles effectively. Secondly, moral examples remain epistemologically necessary even for adult human beings. Human beings are saddled with a ‘discursive, image dependent understanding’, and because of this they need to represent abstract moral concepts symbolically and analogically. Thirdly, examples provide us with hope and inspiration that what morality demands is humanly feasible. And fourthly, examples give us something concrete on which we can focus our own efforts – a mark to emulate and perhaps even to surpass.”

“Kant thought things, not because they were true, but because he was Kant.”

“To question reason is to trust it.”

“What Pascal overlooked was the hair-raising possibility that God might out-Luther Luther. A special area in hell might be reserved for those who go to mass. Or God might punish those whose faith is prompted by prudence. Perhaps God prefers the abstinent to those who whore around with some denomination he despises. Perhaps he reserves special rewards for those who deny themselves the comfort of belief. Perhaps the intellectual ascetic will win all while those who compromised their intellectual integrity lose everything.There are many other possibilities. There might be many gods, including one who favors people like Pascal; but the other gods might overpower or outvote him, à la Homer. Nietzsche might well have applied to Pascal his cutting remark about Kant: when he wagered on God, the great mathematician ‘became an idiot.”