At the moment, I am reading Kant - specifically, the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals - for the first time. Now, whether or not I ought to have read Kant before and what exactly I think of Kant are questions which will have to wait. Much more important to get across here is that Kant... well, a sample of text says it so much better than I could:
This will may therefore not be the single and entire good, but it must be the highest good, and the condition for all the rest, even for the demand for happiness, in which case it can be united with the wisdom of nature, when one perceives that the culture of reason, which is required for the former, limits in many way the attainment of the second aim, which is always conditioned, namely of happiness, at least in this life, and can even diminish it to less than nothing without nature's proceeding unpurposively in this; for reason, which recognizes its highest practical vocation in the grounding of a good will, is capable in attaining this aim only of a contentment after its own kind, namely from the fulfillment of an end that again only reason determines, even if this should also be bound up with infringement of the ends of inclination.
The translation I'm reading claims that it deliberately left many of the awkwardnesses that other translations take out in, since that's what Kant's really like. Still, WTF? Whatever the thought is here, surely there is a way of expressing it that isn't quite so hideous.
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Insofar as as this sort of thing (eventually) inspired Moore and Russell to revolt against Idealism, and insofar as it continues to give analytic philosophy a bogeyman to define its methods and aims against, everything has turned out for the best. I'll say though, that if you read Groundwork repeatedly, the prose (and the argument) does sort of show a certain rhythm.
Anyway, as Peter Suber once said:
If you do not encounter a difficult passage in the Critique every night, seek counseling.
I'm actually finding Kant quite interesting: the prose is, from the perspective of understanding it, dreadful, but I can see the attraction of a (pragmatic) idealism. The fact that Kant is wilfully obscurantist as a writer ought not to impugn his philosophy, I guess. This may be the legacy of Quine - think of Davidson as the link between him and Kant. So, maybe, from my perspective, everything didn't turn out for the best. Think of G.A. Cohen, the analytical (ex-)Marxist, and his article Facts and Principles, which effectively ends up saying, if you don't share my intuitions, then that's that - there's nothing more to be said. Something, I think, has gone wrong there.
I've edited the post to make it slightly clearer what I am getting at. Oh, the irony.
Primrose path that leadeth to destruction and Hegel, I say (probably wrongly). Liz
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