Fw: [Buddha-l] Philosophy East & West

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

jkirk schreef:

> Hi Erik,
> Yes, Kant-- the complicated one........but still he has always seemed 
> to me to be an essentialist/idealist in his theory of the Good.
> Wrong?

Not at all. Kant called himself a critical idealist. Essence is another matter, because it's a metaphysical concept and Kant argued that we can only accept those metaphysical concepts that we cannot deny logically. This leaves preciously little essences, because all phenomena are the product of the workings of our mind (our categories give the physical structure and our imagination gives them their appearance). Even the ego as we experience it is not an essence but a phenomenon. There is another ego, the one that makes it possible for us to be responsable, Kant called this 'the transcendental unity of conscious perception', if he would have been a Buddhist he might have called it the 'transcendental unity of karma'. Now, Kant doesn't say this ego causes our existence, but if we exist the way we do we have to admit the existence of this transcendental unity. This doesnot seem to be a very different way of reasoning from 'if there is sickness, old age and death, ther must be birth', etc.

Erik


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