A
Anonymous06/21/25, 21:38No.24485940Esoteric Kantianism Hate Thread
>My doctrine is at it's core an attempt to develop a system of practical philisophy whose aim is to obtain the aim of speculative philosophy: the system of omniscience-- through a priori means. It is the redemption of armchair metaphysics against the pretensions of empirical "science".
So I was thinking today about this post from the esoteric kantanon, and realized the guy probably just has severe mental illness, maybe OCD, because how the hell can anyone know all the particular knowledge of the empirical sciences a priori? That just sounds insane, and not in a good way. We scientists spend years investigating small parts of nature, and not individually mind you, but as academic communities with many people contributing to research, and even then we are but scratching the tip of an iceberg whose size below the surface we cannot fathom. Yet this little goblino fan thinks he can know all this just by thinking about it on his armchair? It would be funny if it wasn't so infuriating. And then ignorant retards read his shit and might actually believe him. That's the worst part.
52
Replies
A
Anon06/21/25, 21:41No.24485948
He is shitposting. He literally thinks that a buman being can achieve omniscience. I confronted him with the fact that he has never a priori intuited a single empirical fact and that it is impossible for anyone to believe in his stupid bullshit because everybody knows that omniscience and a priori knowledge of empirical facts is impossible. Of course he simply doubled down and claimed that his abstract nonsense proves that it is possible even though he has never done it and the alchemical techniques or imagination meditation or whatever he thinks will allow him to have a priori knowledge of empirical facts have obviously never succeeded assuming he has even tried it at all. Either he is a shitposter or he is an egomaniacal liar like every cult leader in history.
A
Anon06/21/25, 22:14No.24486010
Everything he talks about is legitimate post-Kantian philosophy presented in a silly form. That Kant is a crypto-rationalist? Maimon tried to fuse Leibniz and Kant because he thought it was the only way to overcome Kant’s dualisms. Fichte also thought Leibniz was a sort of proto-Kantian as did Schelling. Deriving all the laws of nature a priori? That’s Schelling. Man being unified in God, us being an “appearance” of God? That’s Fichte. The idea that Kant has esoteric meanings? They literally all said this in one way or another. It’s a testament to how shit this board is that no one picks up on this. His shtick is to read post-Kantians into Kant, say it’s what Kant really meant all along, and present it in an outrageous/garish way. Pretty sure he just wants to talk about idealism with people but this board is 99.99% pseud.
A
Anon06/21/25, 22:19No.24486019
The simple rebuke is this:
All a priori knowledge is just tautology, repeating the same thing in different terms.
We know all bachelors are unmarried males because unmarried male is literally the definition of bachelor, it's just restating the meaning in other words.
We know 2+2=4 a priori because 2+2 is just another way of writing 4.
Thus no new information can be gained without experience, and besides, we need experience to learn that others use these symbols and words to mean things in the first place.
A
Anon06/21/25, 23:34No.24486182
Honestly, this was supposed to be kind of a bait thread. I hadn't seen his posts in a while and haf been wanting him to elaborate more on his system, but I haven't seen him post in a while. Esoteric kantanon I summon you. Dispute with us.
A
Anon06/22/25, 01:43No.24486440
“All that activity can ever reflect upon is pure willing, which is the highest thing that is determinable. What is determinable in this case is the overall realm of reason as such. This totality is limited and determined, prior to anything else, by thinking of a concept that limits me (individuality). This provides us with something objective, which, at the same time, is something determinable for the empirical will. Three distinct levels are present here: (1) The level of pure will, or the level of reason as a whole. This is the highest thing that is determinable. (2) But the latter is further determined whenever, in consequence of a concept of having to limit ourselves, anything is extracted from it through individuality. (3) This individuality is what is determinable for a particular moment of consciousness, i.e. it is what is determinable for a determinate will. An act of empirical willing is a mere act of reflecting upon pure willing as such. This empirical act of willing - appearing as an act of willing - becomes my entire self-activity. Accordingly it is only an appearance and nothing in itself.”That’s what genuine esoteric Kantianism is like. (Note the Phaedrus echoes.) It’s a profound philosophy and if you’re intrigued by the Kantanon, read Fichte.
A
Anon06/22/25, 17:07No.24487749
I loathe this dork and his hanger-ons. Notice how they never engage with the Wheeleranon who tries to contribute in their threads. Either they're not familiar with his terminology and have no interest in broadening their horizons, or they think they're above him. Fichtefag thinks philosophy is glorified sudoku. Give me the old schizo threads of /lit/ any day.
A
Anon06/22/25, 21:06No.24488340
>and realized the guy probably just has severe mental illness
Isn't that the point of it? Go schizo that you see the underlying patterns and can understand them empirically?
A
Anon06/22/25, 23:31No.24488648
I like Esoteric Kantanon. He may be a schizo who monomaniacally obsesses over his system, but he's clearly sincere about advancing philosophy, even if it's in his own wacko way. We need more sincere posters here instead of miserable cynics who are afraid of sincerely affirming anything novel.
A
Anon06/23/25, 24:16No.24488725
Some have said I’m slavishly devoted to Fichte - no I’m just interested in him, I think he’s very underrated, understudied, and misunderstood, sometimes even by scholars of German idealism. (Any article you read that claims Fichte’s first principle in SoK is the self-positing of empirical consciousness should be ignored). I like that he remains within Kantian bounds - for the most part nothing he says is extravagant. His whole thinking is like a beautiful, autistic meditation on normal life. He wants to show how consciousness and nature can be unified; he wants, not to prove that life is meaningful (which is impossible) but to lead you to think carefully about this meaningfulness. And his mode of thought is just wild - very creative, not like anyone else. He constantly changes his presentation, a real virtuoso. No other philosopher I’ve read is like him.I am struggling with his theory of the eternity (=extratemporality) of the pure will in the 79 lectures, it seems like he’s overreaching. Why does the will have to be outside of time? “Because it’s a principle of experience” yeah but it isn’t the first principle. “You could have no beginning of consciousness because how could you form a concept of a goal unless you knew that you had a will? How can you begin with something abstract?” Any time you know something abstract you know the concrete too at least in potency! In the 75 “On What is Distinctive” he accounts for the ideality of time just like he does space - time is a necessary determination of the manifold of inner sense. That’s rational. But to claim a reality “beyond time”, the pure will - one of Fichte’s advantages over Kant is that he normally avoids even the appearance of that kind of thing. Tl;dr - it’s a neat theory but it’s transcendent, or so it seems to me for now. I can understand the idea of God being beyond time; I can understand the ideality of time; I don’t follow him in putting the will itself outside of time (in its synthetic aspect anyway). But I’ll keep thinking about it, these are easy objections, I’m probably misunderstanding him. I remember when I first started I thought the infinitude of the absolute in SoK was the potential infinity of the free subject (IDIOT IDIOT IDIOT). Fichte demands patience and maximum charity.
A
Anon06/23/25, 02:02No.24488914
The Kant poster dude never recovered from this.
A
Anon06/23/25, 17:45No.24490318
>Kantianism
It's all just utilitarianism with lipstick and a dress put on, there's no point exhausting yourself over such things.
A
Anon06/23/25, 22:37No.24491096
Bump
A
Anon06/24/25, 01:36No.24491444
“One of the best objections one could raise against transcendence idealism is as follows: ‘If nature is your own product, then how is it that you are nevertheless able to learn things from nature? If nature is your own product, then how is any research into nature possible? How could you perform any experiments? You must already be acquainted with nature. Therefore, despite what you claim, nature must also contain for you something more, something you did not expect to find. But this is the characteristic feature of ((posited being)). Consequently, you cannot have produced nature.’Answer: Here we do no more than learn about ourselves and employ our faculty of judgment to analyze what is posited by the imagination. Nature in its entirety is a product of the imagination.”Top kek this is why Fichte became a footnote, he simply refused to compromise with normie thinking. He’s actually not crazy and if you understand his philosophy that answer makes perfect sense.
