From The Grand Modern Synthesis
Empiricism and rationality came from Bacon
In the 1780s/90s Truth, Goodness, and Beauty were still sublime. Hume undermined science and morality. Nature became only matter in motion as described in science. There is no true freedom.
Kant gave an alternate view:
1. An account of reality that preserved the scientific view.
2. An account of morality that preserved freedom.
The “Copernican turn” in epistemology said that minds don’t conform to reality. Everything we see is in time (put on our science glasses). Phenomena just have an appearance to us.
The “noumena” is the way things are. We can believe the world is free and we can make choices (put on our morality glasses). Reality conforms to the mind, but it is bifurcated:
1. Science is phenomena as experienced, including emotions, matter., and appearance.
2. Morality and trust in the noumenal world equals freedom.
Persons are not things. Morality has nothing to do with emotions or consequences, it is the Good. Duty is compared against inclination and is a moral law in itself. Where is the moral law?
-The Categorical Imperative is a maxim about universalizing-
1. Can you put a law into nature?
2. Morals are anything that can function as a limit to the will and people are things in themselves versus appearances.
3. Out autonomy can lead us to be self legislators.
Did Kant fail, thereby leading to Nietsche?