Isn't it ironic most University-trained philosophers end up treating critiques of Kant's endeavour as...

Question

...some sort of blasphemy and apparently think the existence of the Critique of Pure Reason absolves them from the need to justify their preferences in matters of the legitimacy of objects of knowledge?
What has Kant really proven? What is his real contribution? Couln't you be an empiricist even if you had never read Kant? How many actual scientists bothered with Kant's ideas on the legitimacy of science?

Question with a slightly Nietzschean slant...

Answer 1

One point. I am a scientist and I say science is not predicated on Kant's idea of it's legitimacy. The ideas of men are little to science, where the evidence trumps all in the end.

Answer 2

I've always been kinda partial to Kan'ts explanations. While the paradigm he created for us didn't help us feel more direct contact with being, I always thought his critique of pure reason was dead on.

Yes you definitely could be an empiricist without reading Kant. But Kant's point (at least as I understood it) was not to answer whether we know what we know, but how we know what we know. And we know it, not because of an objective basis, but a subjective a priori basis.

When Rand (the definite Objectivist) said that reason is capable of knowing the objective world, was she not unwittingly making the same a priori assumption that Kant did?

p.s. I'm not really much into Kant. But I am almost in love with Nietzsche, and I must confess that I miss what was supposed to be the Nietzschean slant. :-)

p.p.s. About Kant being ugly, that just gave me a great idea about what to ask next. :-)

Answer 3

As long as we are on a Nietzschean slant...
You forgot to mention that Kant was ugly, can an ugly person REALLY come up with good philosophy?

Answer 4

You need to relax more....