01.31.06
Kant and epistemology
Checking out Fuller’s Social Epistemology at Wikipedia, the Epistemology link didn’t even contain a reference to Kant.
I think that, modern critiques of Kant notwithstanding, Kant is and remains at the peak of epistemological balance.
Kant has been the victim of three (or more) confusing distractions, Hegel’s attack, Nietzsche’s, and the pragmatists’.
And the result? Precisely the epistemological bedlam we find currently, and well documented by Steve Fuller in various of his books.
Noone is apparently able to surpass Kant, either because of the positivistic rejection of ethical considerations, or else because of the subtle way Nietzsche seems to convince those he somehow intimidates.
Actually, once you have been thru Nietzsche’s thunder symphony and he has made his point all that begins to pall and you realize that Kant remains about what he always was, the pivot around which the whole discussion turns.
Everyone is like a gunslinger trying to take out Kant, to become the new foundationalist debunking foundationalism. Nietzsche is especially clever at insinuating his new foundations in the name of anti-foundationalism. With what result? He can’t even handle the issue of cruelty, and does so in superb prose style.
Is that brilliant or a mess?