Belief in God is rational. Everything has a cause. So unless there is a first cause, then you would have an infinite regress. And then nothing could exist. Therefore there must be a first cause. Therefore God, the first cause, exists. QED.
31.10.21
Heidegger certainly has a point that philosophy has been down hill since the Pre-Soctratics. That is it has become all about man and not about Being.
Heidegger certainly has a point that philosophy has been down hill since the Pre-Soctratics. That is it has become all about man and not about Being. And he proposes to understand Being (Sein) by means of man (Dasein.) But he felt that this later part of his project was not possible so he never wrote the second part of Being and Time.. [Which was all about Dasein].
Why do I mention this? because I feel that the Kant-Fries School [and see https://www.friesian.com/undecd-1.htm] does have a lot to say about Being itself, and succeeds where Heidegger knew he had failed.
Or maybe it is not that he failed, but did not see how to bring the project to fruition.
Heidegger is a very Kantian sort of project. Instead of our accepting the dinge an sich things in themselves into computer chips, with Heidegger we impose our form of Being onto things in themselves. But this is just as unsatisfactory as Kant himself. Imposing our forms onto things tells us nothing at all about anything except our delusions. [And in fact, I gave up after getting about half way through it. It did not seem to me that he succeeded in his original point, and about half way through Being and Time it seemed to go downhill.]
It is Fries who discovered this sort of knowledge that is not by reason nor by the sense that it is possible to understand the dinge an sich.
I was at the beach the whole day so I have nothing here to add about Gemara Rashi and Tosphot. And I am nor really able to concentrate on my learning as I should, so instead I elect to share my thoughts why I think the Kant-Fries School is important [in spite of my feeling that the serious disagreement with Hegel is unfounded.] At any rate, I discovered great ideas in Gemara really only because of my learning with David Bronson in Uman. It is really not all that innate to me. Inherently I am more interested in philosophy.
I might add here that there is a an idea in Heidegger of forsaking beings and follow Being. To seek authenticity. This strikes me as very close to Rav Nahman of Uman in his idea of Hitbodadut.. Go to a place where no one else is and talk with God. For when one is surrounded by people all the time it is very easy for one to lose entirely who one really is.
[The problem with Heidegger is that there is a sort of self worship there. All there is is to be who you are. No obligations to anyone else as Dr Michael Sugrue points out.]
For the type of dynamics you have with Lagrange [or the Hamiltonian] you find things tend to their place of minimal energy [or maximal sometimes like in optics], Causality is not at all the determining thing.
This is something I have already mentioned this in terms of the Kant Friesian School. Where causality is not a part of things in themselves.
I might add to this that time also is secondary as we see in Quantum Mechanics. [As Lemaitre wrote almost a hundred years ago in his papers showing the Big Bang and that time only began after there were a few quanta around to make time to be able to exist.]
And this also goes with the Kant Fries approach where time itself is not a part of things in themselves.,
30.10.21
Every group is trying to get to the top. Some by intellect. Some by skin color.
As Jordan Peterson points out, hierarchies are imbedded into the DNA of not just mammals and chickens, but also in lobsters. So they are not the result of Capitalism. [Presumably lobsters are not adept at being shopkeepers.] So we see Nietzsche was right. Every group is trying to get to the top. Some by intellect. Some by skin color.
The idea of the will to power but modified from Schopenhauer who was trying to say that there is only one dinge an sich. The Will. But Nietzsche asked what does that will want? And he saw what is known as the will to power. You can see much in affairs where you might otherwise wonder what is this or that group trying to get to? Well the answer is blowing in the wind. They all want power. Not equality. Not fair treatment. They want to be on top. But they dress it in fine sounding noble words of equality and justice.
With John Locke things have primary qualities and secondary qualities
With John Locke things have primary qualities and secondary qualities. Primary means in themselves. Secondary is things that they have only because of our sensing them. [Like it feels hard and cold.] Kant noticed all qualities are secondary. Everything you know about a thing are things you know in relation to yourself. So what is left? The thing in itself. That is like the old difference between form and content. The thing is the content and the form is your categories that you put it into. [The categories are like computer chips that process the information.] But "It exists" or "It does not exist" are also a priori forms . So we add that also? Then the thing in itself maybe is just not there?
With Fries immediate non intuitive knowledge is how content is known. So this sort of knowledge does answer that question and many more.
With Hegel, the Logos [in Neo Platonic philosophy] is the source of everything. Not just the logical forms, but even beings. So our minds (which are small parts of the Logos) perceive immediately the categories.
And with Hegel just pure reason can know things. [So that is very close to Fries -- as far as I can see,-we know the thing in itself by reason to Hegel, and by a sort of knowledge that is not reason to Fries.]
So what I getting at? It is that I think both Fries and Hegel are important. [But I should add that both are in some need for sieving. There are along the way lots of places that can cause misunderstanding. And when I say Fries I really mean how that approach was developed by Leonard Nelson and Kelley Ross. When I say Hegel while I think it is fairly plain and simple, but I can see that McTaggart and Cunningham added clarity where before there had been misunderstanding.
In any case, I see "Back to Kant" straight just means the old problems cropping up again as was noticed immediately after the Critique was published