Search Results
6/28/2025, 7:22:50 PM
>>24503793
>My thought - because we're living in the age where we have "methodological naturalism" from "metaphysical naturalism" as an asset - God is a mystery, however far, high, deep, etc. is not enough to reach and unfathomable. So that means one can make it a constant, put on the side, or exclude completely.
I'm definitely no expert in 18th century science but my impression from reading idealist philosophers is that most scientists had already completely excluded God from science, and this is something that goes back to the Galileo/Bacon and even into the middle ages. Whether the scientist personally believed in God or not wasn't relevant (and ofc all would say that they did), you tried to explain nature by nature. You still have religious people like Hamann trying to say science didn't make sense without God but they were more fringe. So for example Hamann thought the origin of language could not be explained without God.
Kant would say that there is an ideal of reason that leads us to seek total coherence of nature, but it was not logical to go from this ideal to saying that there is a God. God, freedom, and immortality could only be known practically. This was not meant to be deflationary. But a proof of God would not begin from nature, it would be rooted in your own sense of freedom and being subject to a moral law.
This is also what Fichte means when he talks about God. His argument would be something like "I can only understand how I can exist as a conscious being in nature if nature stands in my relation to my will; this means it stands in relation to morality; but morality depends on God; so nature depends on God too, not as some sort of creator, the relationship would be something we could not understand. If God is posited as a creator then he's simply another being, but he's supposed to transcend nature". Something like that.
>Either way, it seems the two are battling it out from under Socrate's forms and watdoism
They were both well beyond Socrates and Plato, a lot had happened in philosophy since then. They both took inspiration from Plato, though for Fichte this only becomes really pronounced when he's already gotten in trouble and is no longer so famous or influential.
You might enjoy picrel because it addresses your questions directly. These were lectures for first-year philosophy students so they're pretty accessible. A comfy, easy and enlightening read. Fichte's actual arguments are much cooler than my basic summaries of them.
>My thought - because we're living in the age where we have "methodological naturalism" from "metaphysical naturalism" as an asset - God is a mystery, however far, high, deep, etc. is not enough to reach and unfathomable. So that means one can make it a constant, put on the side, or exclude completely.
I'm definitely no expert in 18th century science but my impression from reading idealist philosophers is that most scientists had already completely excluded God from science, and this is something that goes back to the Galileo/Bacon and even into the middle ages. Whether the scientist personally believed in God or not wasn't relevant (and ofc all would say that they did), you tried to explain nature by nature. You still have religious people like Hamann trying to say science didn't make sense without God but they were more fringe. So for example Hamann thought the origin of language could not be explained without God.
Kant would say that there is an ideal of reason that leads us to seek total coherence of nature, but it was not logical to go from this ideal to saying that there is a God. God, freedom, and immortality could only be known practically. This was not meant to be deflationary. But a proof of God would not begin from nature, it would be rooted in your own sense of freedom and being subject to a moral law.
This is also what Fichte means when he talks about God. His argument would be something like "I can only understand how I can exist as a conscious being in nature if nature stands in my relation to my will; this means it stands in relation to morality; but morality depends on God; so nature depends on God too, not as some sort of creator, the relationship would be something we could not understand. If God is posited as a creator then he's simply another being, but he's supposed to transcend nature". Something like that.
>Either way, it seems the two are battling it out from under Socrate's forms and watdoism
They were both well beyond Socrates and Plato, a lot had happened in philosophy since then. They both took inspiration from Plato, though for Fichte this only becomes really pronounced when he's already gotten in trouble and is no longer so famous or influential.
You might enjoy picrel because it addresses your questions directly. These were lectures for first-year philosophy students so they're pretty accessible. A comfy, easy and enlightening read. Fichte's actual arguments are much cooler than my basic summaries of them.
6/24/2025, 3:19:20 PM
>>24492454
(cont'd)
"Insofar as this determinable whole is referred to the duality of the act of determining and determinate being, it itself appears as a whole in two different ways: in relation to the determining subject, what is determinable is my body; in relation to a determinate being, what is determinable is the entire world. Thus we here obtain an important result: I = X; I as soul and I as body: these are simply two different aspects of the very same thing. Furthermore, I as body and the sensible world outside of me are also particular aspects of one and the same thing. I = X, body, mind, and sensible world; these are simply different ways of looking at exactly the same thing. This constitutes the spirit of transcendental idealism." (Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy, 1799, sect. 17)
Ofc many people here will interpret this in a schizo, quasi-mystical sense, which is not at all intended. Still this quote is a good illustration of how even the most (supposedly) 'subjectivist' idealist of them all, Fichte, was anti-Cartesian.
(cont'd)
"Insofar as this determinable whole is referred to the duality of the act of determining and determinate being, it itself appears as a whole in two different ways: in relation to the determining subject, what is determinable is my body; in relation to a determinate being, what is determinable is the entire world. Thus we here obtain an important result: I = X; I as soul and I as body: these are simply two different aspects of the very same thing. Furthermore, I as body and the sensible world outside of me are also particular aspects of one and the same thing. I = X, body, mind, and sensible world; these are simply different ways of looking at exactly the same thing. This constitutes the spirit of transcendental idealism." (Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy, 1799, sect. 17)
Ofc many people here will interpret this in a schizo, quasi-mystical sense, which is not at all intended. Still this quote is a good illustration of how even the most (supposedly) 'subjectivist' idealist of them all, Fichte, was anti-Cartesian.
Page 1