PHILOSOPHY - The Good Life: Kant [HD]
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- čas přidán 5. 07. 2024
- In this Wireless Philosophy video, Chris Surprenant (University of New Orleans) discusses the account of human well-being and the good life presented by Immanuel Kant in the his moral, political, and religious writings. He explains why Kant believes that the highest good for a human being is the conjunction of happiness and complete virtue and how it is possible for an individual to attain these two things at the same time.
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![PHILOSOPHY - The Good Life: Aristotle [HD]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/VFPBf1AZOQg/mqdefault.jpg)
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![PHILOSOPHY - The Good Life: Nietzsche [HD]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/AMFkSM5bHMo/mqdefault.jpg)
Please continue this amazing series, thank you.
Thanks for your work
thanks for making these useful videos
Excellent video, thank you!
Kant's moral writings reflect his metaphysical worldview: they are riddled with assumption. They assume that once an individual undergoes a certain degree of education and civilizing, virtues that are a "categorical imperative" will become self-evident, and that valuing of anything outside of reason is inherently a vice. Given this revelation it is not surprising that he believes in a religious explanation for his existence, which by definition requires unverifiable assumptions.
Yet in his principles of morality he puts this religious persuasion to one side. Instead of referring to the bible for morality he comes up with the categorical imperative, something not dependant on any religion and actually something that atheists frequently seem to appeal/refer to as a viable basis of morality and as a means to prevent the dog-eat-dog societal existence that nature seems be based upon.
Well delivered!! Thanks
Super celar! Thank you wiphi!!
Great explanation, thanks!
Truly excellent.
Beautifully done. Thank you!
Great Video!
Had the exact same thoughts as Kant the other day. Feels kinda excited to see we share the similar paths of philosophy.
no one understood the nature of humanity better than kant.
Great video! Super informative ❤️😊 I found that I could understand it better though if I slowed the playback speed!
It’s a bit fast!
Virtue does not guarantee happiness, and does not get us any closer. In fact, we often deprive ourselves from happiness in search of these virtues.
The problem is that the virtues are objective (externally recognised) meanwhile the happiness is subjective (internally recognised) so comparing them together does produce some difficulties.
Great video, thank you, note to self(nts) watched all of it 5:49
Please do Nietzsche. I'm sick of people saying he was nothing more than an advocate of nihilism.
+CPS222 I second this! Nietzsche blasted Nihilism in his work Anti-Christ as it creates despair. In fact, Nietzsche was an egoist in the vein of Epicurus, Steiner, and Schopenhauer. Though he recognized that there where all kinds of values unlike the formers,
+CPS222 Philosophically speaking, why does it matter what people say about Nietzsche?
Philosophically speaking, the only things that matter are things which I decide matter. The fault and facets are in myself.
Nietzsche's an egoist to be exact.
yea... Nihilism was never meant as a destination, but to be used as a stepping stone, a negrado of sorts
Once I came across a certain categorization on how we as humans prioritize. It went something like 'first comes obtaining shelter from the elements, next collecting food etc. up until ultimatly having 'questioning one selfs'. The guy that came up with it was maybe more of a biologist than a philosopher but maybe someone has any idea what I mean. The idea I just described he called something like 'the pyramid of....'.
+ISAAAAAR Maslow's pyramid of needs?
+ISAAAAAR "The guy that came up with it was maybe more of a biologist than a philosopher"
Interesting observation! But close, Kant was an anthropologist to be exact. Not to mention he was also an astronomer as he calculated the orbit of Uranus 100 years before telescope were sophisticated enough to view further into space. Especially as he had the observations of Galileo to work with.
+Håkon Blystad That seems to be the one! Thanks a lot!
Kant is just simply out of the world. The greatest philosopher ever, even the ancient Greeks would be envious of his intellect.
Moral dilemma sort of fucks Kant's world. Doesn't it?
I cannot find the virtue happiness syllogism from kant in this wording anywhere, please help. I'm not sure it is even an valid syllogism.
is possible any philosopher playing guitar? i plan on doing more research in time travel with physics etc beacause in theory is possible and i believing that music information peope holding back because of not importance, but so this knowledge advance will be very helpful and also which where heavy drinkers and maybe also loved da herb
maybe not so appropriate but i take a lot of interest and maybe also others
zhank you so much in advancement
+Ruben Stamm thank you
It's too bad that today we live in a society that places happiness above morality and thus we no longer have virtuous people. :(
+Jesse Tellez
[Citation Needed]
+JJAB91 You don't need a citation, you need to look around.
hac5x3 So trust in anecdotal evidence? No, thats fucking stupid.
I second that motion.
Even the pursuit of virtue is appreciated.
But then again, since virtue is relative, how does one determine virtue in another?
+JJAB91 Yeah, the hell with what you see and understand to be the truth. No need to factor that shit in to your conclusions.
3:30 Brazil explained.
May I just kindly ask what Kant's views are with regard to abortion?
There are very varied views on both sides, with people citing Kant on either camps
He didn't have any views on abortion as its a recent phenomenon
the categorical imperative comes straight out of a ivory tower. it miight be right but it can't happen in a world where people strive to survive. i'm not a philosophy student or something but that's my opinion about that.
Interestingly enough, Marxism seems to have the same aims as Kant. As did Abraham Maslow.
Capitalistic societies need Kant's teachings now more than ever. I fear it's too late, at least until the next big revolution.
Since no one learn from history we are bound to having a "revolution" just to seeing things rotting to the ground again and repeat. After a few millenia we should have already learned something right?
Lucas Lemos I'm British so right now it feels like my predictions are coming true after this referendum. These are scary times on this island.
Based Souljah, i'm a Souljah
I feel sorry about the things that are happening there good sir. After the first world war Germany got on a terrible economic state as well, and it was through hate and disregard to human rights that the nazi raised itself up. It will be a terrible shame if the island that fought such terrible ideas agaisn't humanity follow the same path.
Eh...I might be a bit biased since I have very strong right-libertarian/anarchistic leanings but I believe Kant's reasoning cannot justify socialism. He had a second principle “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.” that implies that government action to forcefully redistribute wealth is using the wealthy as a means to an end rather than an end in themselves. His principles, especially his second one, is quite classically liberal in nature. His writings also seemed to reflect that.
The categorical imperative and the teachings of Kant are interesting, but by all accounts unrealistic. The categorical imperative, e.g. morals being law which can be made universal, is a completely unrealistic idea. For example, you can never lie. Never, never ever in any way shape or form. Would a lie save your mothers life or the life of all humanity? If you want to be moral you can't lie. The only people that can lie to are children since they lack rationality and as such you don't need to act "morally" to them, you can use lies as a means to an end. But you cannot lie to a rational man.
In my view Kant's logic is incredibly rigid and is the very same thinking that is pervasive in the large government bureaucracies that are currently completely incapable of dealing with the rising exploitation of capitalism.
Well.... I guess western philosophy really is just a bunch of footnotes on Plato and Aristotle (paraphrasing).
What is the origin of reason in Kant's philosophy?
His bathroom.
I find Kant's argument of happiness through virtue confusing and problematic. Notice that Aristotle's argument for virtue does not invoke any need for a higher being nor claims that such a higher being would necessarily exist stemming from the existence of virtue. Aristotle's argument presupposes that happiness/eudaimonia is internally derived, and in short virtue is a necessary component if ultimate happiness is to be achieved. I would appreciate it if anyone knows of other philosophers' criticisms of his argument for uniting happiness, virtue, and the presence of a supreme creator.
Furthermore, even if a supreme creator did exist, why does it necessarily follow that said creator would also guarantee the possibility of achieving ultimate happiness? Is there any theological basis that God/supreme creator desires happiness for its creations? (I'm actually curious - I'm not familiar with Biblical scripture so a citation would be appreciated.)
+dandy-lions Kant's views are interesting. I know in the Critique of Pure Reason, he admits we can never be absolutely certain of the existence of God, but we have to nevertheless believe in such a being because otherwise our moral values are useless. (I don't agree with him, but that's his reasoning. There has to be something animating the values. It makes sense for people who haven't derived their own values through experience and/or reason. They fall into despair otherwise.) Also, I think a lot of it comes from really wanting people to be different from the other animals. I know the romantics that came after Kant were really interested in that.
Beyond that, I figure the argument about God being "good" is that because he's a perfect being, he would necessarily have to not be evil--which is funny because that implies some sort of standard for perfection. I think in Kant's case, it's less scriptural and more that God would not be a being of the flesh, so he wouldn't be tempted to and/or even capable of indulging in sensual pleasures. So again there's that arbitrary definition of evil. At least that's my take.
The idea that morality must be determined by a fear of a god is today considered a lower level of morality by psychologists. Kant sounds primitive in some ways I think, at least compared to a "superman" like Neitzsche! That old saying comes to mind, if god can't end evil, he's not god, and if he wont, he's not good. I much prefer epicurean or gnostic explanations for god - god is just so consumed in his own contentment that he can't act, or god isn't there, or he isn't good - or better yet, that we created and then killed god.
+dandy-lions What does it matter if we have or don't have the creator in the equation? Not sure why Kant felt the need to include it. All I can think of is that Kant's philosophy, on some level, is an attempt to validate god's existence. In essence, he is saying: "see, we're virtuous because we are of god, and not just animals".
Well Kant is putting a supreme creator in the equation because that's the logical end for him. Since human beings possess desire for happiness and a discomfort for unhappiness, Kant reasons that there has to be a source. ( or some sort of account for metaphysics). It's not to far from Descartes,' " I'm a thinking thing, therefore I am."
Nathan Pederson It seems no different than the conclusion that, well, WE are here, and WE didn't create this world, so therefore A BIGGER MAN must be there, and must have created it... because after all, WE CREATE THINGS, and WE DIDN'T CREATE IT! Brilliant.
Did Kant stop to wonder why happiness and unhappiness are human-created concepts that are environmentally and socially dependent? Has anyone ever achieved "happiness," or just temporary pleasure? If someone told him the Aztecs think happiness is chopping somebody's head off, I wonder if he'd be shocked to find out that "God" put that form of "happiness" into man, and find clever sophistry to explain why "God" did it!
Bit of a Kant really
5.17 summary
I might have liked this. As a 70 year old man, however, it swooshed by too fast.
I fail to grasp why Kant felt he could say so much about morality while denying the ability of us to engage in metaphysics. Why does he suggest living a good life stems from denying pleasures? Or am I just reading him really superficially? Or was that part of this video made superficially?
0:29 3:14
Problem is Kant made the assumption that only under a "civil society" can such conditions be met.
+JJAB91 I think the effect of environment and condition has a lot to do with that.
huh?
Kant was a poor psychologist. Reason serves emotion and gives us rationalizations. We rationalize what we want to be true. So attending University and living in society are no guarantees of virtue so long as the population is more interested in evangelism than truth seeking.
+Jan Scott You're right. Horrible psychologist. Decent philosopher though. Lmao
Surely our actions and choices are informed by our emotions, but this being true has little to do with whether or not the conclusions propounded by Kant are themselves true. We can bicker endlessly on what emotion caused a bankrupt man to create a budget; whether he adds the various numbers within the budget correctly, however, is another matter entirely.
Also, there was never an assertion that living in society ensures good behavior, just that people need society first to act good.
To be fair, practically everyone in those days was a shitty psychologist. It wasn't quite a real science back them.
Kant wasn't doing psychology though. Contingent facts about how people happen to justify their actions is irrelevant to arguments Kant makes about the relationship between reason and normativity.
You are essentially just repeating Hines critique of ethics and the is/ought problem. I sincerely doubt you have actually read Kant's metaphysics because your response is so utterly flippant. Many people have even said that Kant is the greatest psychologist to ever live even if he was ultimately wrong regarding the priority of theoretical reason
UB.
philosophy needs to be taught in grade school ..
I see several problems with the logic in this argument:
P1. Since we are to realise the highest good
P2. We ought to imply that we can realise the highest good. ( Both P1, P2 is a post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc fallacy ).
C. We can only realise it if god exist. ( C. Is an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy as it reject the idea that we can gain happiness through other things than religion, and the conclusion also reject the fact that religion doesn't always bring happiness to people. most people go to religion because they're forced to go through religion not because they choose to ). This is not a really good argument for moral law, as most people get their morality through Society itself.
Whoa. Now hold up, man. Animals are food. The end. That being established, let us repair back to Kant's synthetic morality. Consider the virtue of eating animals. Devouring animal flesh provides a bounty of happiness. Is it not a virtue? Sixty children experienced death by starvation or disease thereof in the last ten minutes. Ask them. Why do they not have a pot roast or tuna sandwich on their table? Having such resources available requires a virtue, one that must be upheld with such fidelity as to meet and answer the question of hunger thrice daily. According to Kant the way to go about this is to call upon reason to perform its function. Which is? For Kant, to identify and perform those actions that are right, generally, those divorced from tending to one's physical body. Such base fixations ultimately compose, completely, the set of immorality. If we feel uncertain we need only ask 'What if everyone did this possible action?' or 'Should not everyone do this instead?' and one shall find the correct moral duty to perform. Kant promises this rational course will result in self-respect viz. happiness. With a steadfast effort from everyone to adhere to this code we will reverse the tide off moral degeneration. For soon the animals will be eating us.
+Shawn OBrien "Sixty children experienced death by starvation or disease thereof in the last ten minutes." If we fed the food, that we´re currently feeding to farmed animals, to humans instead we would have enough food for 12 billion people to survive (assuming equal distribution, which of course doesn´t happen). So part of the reason why those children don´t have food on the table is that we fed their food to animals we want to eat (but an even bigger part of the reason is, that we have a stupid distribution of food, where people die because of obesity while other people die of starvation at the same time) And the argumentation "Animals are food. The end." is not necessarily a rigorous proof.
+Myren I think your heart is in the right place. Use your physics too. We need a sustainable and scalable plan. How can we make hunger go away and not return? Productive work. Pushing our reason to the point of madness, then pushing more. Work until our hands bleed, then work harder. Yes, we feed the hungry so they may develop their minds and bodies.This is the proper use of reason. And only from this will one find Kant's euphimistic "self-respect" which is only a weak approximation the ultimate and private zenith of our emotional nature -- pride. Those who were hungry will know this too. They will see what everyone should understand, that transporting scarce resource subsidies will be too costly to sustain. So they will trade with us and us with them. Useful items proper to human life created from rational work. This is only the beginning. What about all that free food and any other infrastructure expenditures? It likely will no longer be relevant. Think of the inventions. The cures. A decent battery. Anti-cancer methods and agents. Asteroid mining. Art. Poetry. Possibly even a once-in-a-millenium breakthrough to catapult all of our lives into a new epoch.
And if some, perhaps every single one of us, along with our compassion, provided all that free food and material with a whole hell of a lot of vested self-interest, well, is that not how we live? Is that not the nature of human life? It is. It is good. We all come to know this independently.
Kant and all his ilk, regardless of intent, speak from a confused and evil quagmire that vomits up various synthetic visions of what we all should do, implying that all we do is of no value. This is poison at worst, and misdirection at best. These mystical systems challenge us to discriminate sharply, offering no quarter, between contradiction and consistency; between self-betrayal and pride.
How can Christians act virtuously if all their actions are guided by a fear of hell?
Tom Palmer Not all. Sone Christians act right because it's the right thing to do. Don't jump too early to conclusions.
Animals can't reason? Well, good thing we know more about these things today than we did when Kant was still around. Sheesh.
+AV 57 Well animals may be capable of moral instinct, they do not posses the autonomy or free will to perform moral acts, which is how they differ from human beings.
CosmoShidan Citation needed.
AV 57 Here is the article:www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/wildlife/5373379/Animals-can-tell-right-from-wrong.html
But do you understand what autonomy is? Especially when Kant speaks of it?
CosmoShidan Unless I'm missing something, the article never mentioned that nonhuman animals lack free will and humans have free will. Free will has always be in a very controversial topic since it's hard to define and we lack a mechanism for accurately determining when and where it is.
AV 57 And this is where I show Kant's view of free will from Critique of Pure Reason, p.516:
"A will is purely animal when it is determined by sensible impulses or instincts only, that is, when it is determined in a pathological manner. A will which can be determined independently of sensitive impulses consequently by reason alone, is called "free will" and everything which is connected with this "free will", either as principle or consequence is termed practical."
Look at his face. Kant's lips are small.
Functional neo-Stoic citizenship training
Money=happiness
The end.
This is assuming a non-deterministic universe and the existence of free will?
+Steve Kennedy Kant addresses this in his other writings. He thinks that there is an undetermined reality that outside the determined world of appearance.
I reject Kant's definition of well being. It has to many assertions leading to a conclusion without basis.
Kant fails, if doing good because of mother is, not free and not morally praiseworthy. Then how is doing good because of god morally praiseworthy? It is not free, also and not moral right. To thy ownself be true. You do what is right, so you can sleep at night.
I think that they are different scenarios. Kant believes that God, a higher being, is a representative of true reason.
So if you did good by the church, that isn't freedom but God and the church are different.
Maybe it's best to think of 'freedom' in in terms of social/ situational bounds and God as reason, nothing else.
+Morrick17 Logical fallacy of argument from authority.
+Carla Delastella It has to be determined if God itself affects our freedom.
Kant sucked bigtime and it's probably because he never left his hometown, it's like a monk in a cave, makes no sense how you can glean what life is about and yet not really experience it and the world.
This video just destroyed my admiration for Kant... :( I so much do not agree with this conception of happiness...
I'm 3 years late but why? Just because he believed in a God? Pretty irrational tbh.
@@esentries true...
What a load of crap. It sounds like his philosophy was littered with presuppositions and assumptions based on personal bias.