| | "Rand called Kant the most evil person in human history -- and, as usual, she was right."
Thank you, Leonard Peikoff.
"Kant builds magnificently upon the raw irrationality and depravity of Berkeley and Hume"
I'm really uncomfortable with this idea of calling bad ideas, as such "evil". Hume's skepticism, unlike Kant's, was in no way "impurely" motivated. There is no Hume-ian equivalent of that Kantian one liner "I have found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith". Hume was merely a skeptic, who put out an argument that still holds a lot of weight to this day, not because of some inherent "cultural bankruptcy", but because its a very persuasive argument if you don't know better.
"No-one writes in a more incompetent, incomprehensible, serpentine, tortured, tedious way"
if he's so incompetent and incomprehensible, how did he come to be taken seriously at the peak of the enlightenment? The very fact that he managed to get his works read implies that A: either his works are not "incompetent" and "incomprehensible" in their writing-- If they were, no one would understand them to follow them, or B: that the culture of the time, of the enlightment, was already corrupt enough to want to read them-- in which case he is no longer culpable for the world's descent into hell, as the train was already en route.
"His impure thoughts lead to his impure words which lead to impure deeds done by and to everybody."
1: "impure thoughts"?? you sound like christian. Bad ideas do not constitute some sort of moral "impurity", only direct evasions do.
2: First you call him incompetent, now you use language which paints him out nearly as an omnipotent devil. "done by and to everyone"? that's a lot of credit.
"Nothing is, or ever can be, more false and evil -- or more non-existent and yet destructive -- than his absurd "noumena" and "things-in-themselves."
If you wanted to say he had the most evil ideas ever, that's one thing. But to claim they are not only the most evil ideas ever to exist, but the most evil ideas that ever could possibly exist, implying that it is impossible to make anything more evil? You've got to be kidding. Surely, even if kant is history's greatest villain to date, surely someone will outdo him given enough time.
"This nihilism taken to a height and state of perfection ultimately leads"
Kant was no nihilist. whether or not he made nihilism possible, he certainly wasn't one himself. His "categorical imperative" is a monstrosity, a horrible horrible excuse for an ethic. It still is an ethic. Kant wasn't interested in destroying ethics, or value, or anything else. He was interested in, in his own, twisted way, preserving the intrinicist values of his time. And putting forth a quasi skeptical epistemology also.
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