My understanding of this thread is that some people are urging reading Kant in 1999. My thing would be get a synopsis of Kant from some Marxists philosophers. And that Kant is not more progressive than Franklin or Jefferson, who were bourgeois revolutionists.
Also, my thing is Kant and Jefferson are both liberals, which is to say they have two faces , "dualists", as are modern liberals. When you read Kant and Jefferson look for twofacedness. So, Jefferson writes what you wrote below and worse. And worse than what he wrote, he owned slaves. On his good "face" he wrote The Declaration of Independence -
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are LIfe, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown , that mankind are by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves..."
And that document was part of a revolutionary movement. Did Kant have some praxis superior to that ?
And what of the resolution of the ancient antagonism between the city and the country ?
CB
>>> Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> 10/18/99 04:52PM >>>
Charles Brown wrote:
>What I mean is that Kant was no more progressive than Franklin and Jefferson.
Jefferson? Whose vision of paradise was one of yeoman farmers and slaveowning gentry? And who wrote these lovely words: "Providence has in fact so established the order of things that most evils are the means of producing some good. The yellow fever will discourage the growth of great cities in our nation; & I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health, and the liberties of man. True, they nourish some of the elegant arts; but the useful ones can thrive elsewhere, and less perfection in others, with more health, virtue, and freedom would be my choice." That Jefferson?
Doug