RoR: Forum

They don't say what the specific argument was... Journalism?!?!? (Of course, here in the U.S., the reporter might have left out kant's name figuring their reading public wouldn't know it, or because they didn't know it.)

It somehow fits that they were waiting in line for beer, and that the guy who shot in the head - but he's okay.

Post 1

Tuesday, September 17, 2013 - 10:21am

This came up on MKS's OL where one of the regulars suggested that the damage (or lack of it) from the (non-lethal) bullets was caused by "Das Ding an sich" - "The thing in itself." I replied.

Actually ... Richard Feynman has a passage where he ridicules philosophers for debating what Kant "really" meant by "Das Ding an sich." We translate it easily into Englisch as "The thing in itself." But "an" in German means more like "relative to" or "in relation to" as opposed to "next to."
"Ich stehe an den Tisch." means something different from "Ich stehe neben den Tisch." The latter is literally "... next to the desk." The former is more like "at the desk." "An den Tafel" commonly means "at the blackboard." Hans geht an den Tafel: Johnny goes to the board. Beethoven listeners know well the Ninth with its Chorale from "Ode an die Freude" by Schiller, which is commonly called in Englisch, "Ode to Joy."

"Das Ding an sich" is the shortest problem in Kant. Try reading Kritik der reinen Vernunft. For that discussion, I grabbed a long sentence from the book in German and ran it through the Bing Translator (formerly Babelfisch), which of course, produced a mangle of clauses.

I actually started to translate it, but failed to find one of the words (allgenugsames) in either my Langenscheidt's or my Oxford. Genug means enough - the two words are near-cognates. Gegugsam would be "sufficient." So, "allgenugsam" would be "entirely sufficient" I suppose; but there is no such thing in common German such as "Meine Liebe ist allgegunsam."

We had a discussion here in - I thought it was under Banter or maybe Dissent, but did not find it either back to 2007 - in which I put up a paragraph from Kritik der reinen Vernunft in both German and in English from a trade book. You cannot understand it in either. I do not see why people bother with Kant.

As I said there: What they needed was the scene in Annie Hall where Woody Allen produces Marshall McLuhan to settle an argument.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 9/17, 10:24am)

Post 2

Tuesday, September 17, 2013 - 1:13pm

If the shooting wasn't for contingent motives, Kant would presumably approve.

I once heard a report that Germans learn English in order to read Kant; the translators neaten his syntax and break the sentences into manageable pieces.

Post 3

Wednesday, September 18, 2013 - 11:48am

"Contingent motives": that's pretty funny, Peter. Thanks!

In fact, the Russian original noted:
"That sentence would give him time to more thoroughly study the works of Kant, who contemplated a universal law of morality."

Russian Television (rt.com) was equally terse:
"German philosopher Kant is known for his masterwork "The Critique of Pure Reason" and ideas that reason is the source of morality."

But the Independent (UK) went a bit boffin:
"Kant�s theory on duty-based ethics were based on the principle that no decision should be made unless morally good in itself, regardless of predicted consequences � a thinking he called the categorical imperative."

Reuters opined:"Many Russians love to discuss philosophy and history, often over a drink, but such discussions rarely end in shootings."

So, too, said the New York Times:
"Among educated Russians, including those who drink, classical literature and philosophy are sometimes debated in casual social settings, the way sports often are in Western countries."

I searched a bit for the scene in The Russia House where the British publisher (Sean Connery) explains what he loves about Russia. It went something like this: "You're standing at a urinal and the guy next you asks what you think of the conflict of free will versus determinism in Doestevsky's Crime and Punishment." (Almost packed my bags...)

Huffington Post was liberally non-committal:
"It was not clear which of Kant's ideas may have triggered the violence."
Fox News also found the topic somewhat difficult:
"It was not clear which of Kant's ideas may have triggered the violence."

(So, between the two of them, it is pretty clear that intellectual engagement is just more than we can handle. In fact, the only other Objectivist discussion I read focused on the gun and the bullets.)

Time magazine revealed quite a bit about itself and its theories of truth by passing the buck to the Times of London and quoting this:
"Kant was a Prussian philosopher who was born in 1724 and never left his hometown of K�nigsberg, modern-day Kalingrad. He is widely recognized as having revolutionized Western philosophy by examining how the mind constructs our knowledge of the natural world and probing the limits of our empirical understanding of that world, said The Times."

Over on The Drudge Report, one of the first comments pointed out that they do have gun control laws in Russia.

The Australian waxed eloquent:

"He revolutionised Western philosophy by examining how the mind constructs our knowledge of the natural world and probing the limits of our empirical understanding of that world.
He is best known for his three critiques: The Critique of Pure Reason, The Critique of Practical Reason and The Critique of Judgment.

In the first, Kant explains how reason makes experience possible by imposing structure on the data that our senses provide. However, this process can become less reliable when beer is involved. ...

... Kant also argued for the existence of absolute moral laws, which could never be affected by context. But the gunman and his victim probably knew that.
(German idealism also has led to a philosophy punch-up in Australia, with Liberal MPs ridiculing research grants for academics working on Hegel.)"

(Just to note, that was

a $443,000 study into �The God of Hegel�s Post-Kantian idealism�;

"Ending More of Labour's Waste" from the Liberal Party here.)

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 9/18, 12:03pm)

Post 4

Wednesday, September 18, 2013 - 7:58pm

Michael,

Those quotes are hilarious, too -- except for the sick feeling you get in your gut when you see how the popular media in this country are trying to switch us over to Newspeak. In the same vein, the new education paradigm, Common Core, removed cursive writing from educational curricula. Glenn Beck noted that there are some important documents (e.g., Declaration of Independence) which were written in cursive, and which will become unreadable to the next generation of state-educated 'rug-rats.'

That's not hilarious.

Ed

Post 5

Thursday, October 10, 2013 - 9:52am

"At the offices of BuzzFeed, a company that tracks viral content on the Web, the young staff seems to hardly use cursive. " --
"Technology may script an end to the art of cursive writing" NBC Nightly News here.

Many styles of cursive are very hard to read today. They were developed after Jefferson and the goose quill pen. Steel nibs let the average person have the penmanship of a monk creating an illuminated manuscript. Jefferson was chosen not just for his literary style or political opinions (which they removed), but for his penmanship: everyone could read it. It was not so with other styles.

You know what German Fraktur looks like, that "Black Forest" or "Olde Englishe" or "Wedding Text". Well, it was a sign of culture in Germany to know the cursive for that. So, some people (see here) specialize in translating it for geneaology or historical research.

In the USA, at that time (19th and 20th) the standard was called Spencerian. It, too, is hard to read today.
Google or Bing for "spencerian" to find this among many many others.
http://www.iampeth.com/lessons_spencerian.php

The simple cursive that Steve, Fred, Stephen and the other olde folkes here learned was based on the pencil and ballpoint pen. Think of it as the idiot's version of Spencerian.

Moreover, while this line is in sans-serif or Gothic,
this line is in serif or Roman.
Gothic penmanship was invented in the monestary scriptoria where rapid writing was needed. It is very pared down, without finishing strokes on the letters.

Lest you think it makes no difference. for several months, I pronounced "LinkedIn" as "Linked-line" because of the way it looks in the universal sans-serif of Arial or Helvetica: LinkedIn. I cannot tell an l from an I. Helvetica is for Ldiots. I could rant about it being the product of proletarian politics, but I will not. After I learned what it really is called, I hit the mispronunciation even harder: Linked-LLLN.

Back in 1985, in order to teach computer aided design, they made me take a class in drafting. You have no idea how many unique strokes are required for simple "block printing" of capital letters. Again, it is the difference between "proper" penmanship and the common idiocy of scribbling.

Handwriting changes.... And if you read the NBC News story above, you will find that schools still teach it. I will grant though that the Common Core standards for writing require in the 4th grade that a student have sufficient keyboarding skills to produce two pages at a single sitting.

Also, the Declaration, etc., all, all have been transcribed. If you goto the Avalon Project of Yale Law School, you will find documents from centuries gone by, the Mayflower Compact, the English Bill of Rights...

And, just to note... Objectivists worship Aristotle, but can you read him in Greek? I taught myself. We no longer require Greek and Latin of the educated.

Post 6

Thursday, October 10, 2013 - 10:14am

This Olde Folk still uses a fountain pen; my penmanship, although inevitably illegible, is indubitably indelible.

regards,
Fred

Post 7

Thursday, October 10, 2013 - 10:17am

Michael:

If by technology we mean ever more blurtive social media, then technology may script an end to 'consonants.'

regards,
Fred

Post 8

Thursday, October 10, 2013 - 10:26am

I have three fountain pens on my desk, a Mont Blanc (present), a new Shaefer and an old Shaefer. I lost my Shaefer calligraphy pen coming home from work on the bus last year, so I bought a new one. It was not good enough. I sent it back, telling them that I did not want my $6.95 back: I would be happier with an $8.95 pen that was good to use. Six months later the new Shaefer arrived with a note of thanks. The old Shaefer was one of the last from its generation. It works best for me. More on this later in another topic, Banter perhaps.

Post 9

Thursday, October 10, 2013 - 10:28am

Michael:

re: We no longer require Greek and Latin of the educated.

A running joke(I think it's a joke?)at Princeton graduations; the salutatarian gives his graduation speech in Latin. The graduating class(only)is given his text marked up with cues like "laugh here...boo here...applaud here...." so that those observing the event(who have been given the salutatarian speech text only in Latin, without the cues) will be impressed at how the entire graduating class understands spoken latin..for about 30 seconds, until they figure out the joke, based on the extremely bad over-acting.

See wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salutatorian

Totally spills the beans. Harvard apparently uses less subtle cue cards.

regards,
Fred

Post 10

Thursday, October 10, 2013 - 10:43am

A tale of two diplomas:

My Princeton diploma is written in cursive Latin, is a work of art. It was handed to me by some dean in a flowing robe on a sunny June day in front of a building that once housed the entire US government during the Revolutionary War.

My MIT diploma arrived in the mail, folded in half and shoved in a ratty half sized industrial looking envelope, I almost threw it away before opening it and realizing what it was.

That is fully emblematic of the difference in experiences at those two institutions. One is a liesurely stroll through an ivy covered Disneyland with iced tea in hand...the other is a mad sprint through a Cambridge industrial ToolTown trying to get a drink of water from a firehose without having your face ripped off.

Both will quench the thirst, in different ways.

Post 11

Thursday, October 10, 2013 - 1:17pm