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Träume eines Geistersehers
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This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface.
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- GenresPhilosophyNonfiction
238 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1766
13 people are currently reading
153 people want to read
About the author
Immanuel Kant
3,058 books4,380 followersImmanuel Kant was an 18th-century philosopher from Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). He's regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of modern Europe & of the late Enlightenment. His most important work is The Critique of Pure Reason, an investigation of reason itself. It encompasses an attack on traditional metaphysics & epistemology, & highlights his own contribution to these areas. Other main works of his maturity are The Critique of Practical Reason, which is about ethics, & The Critique of Judgment, about esthetics & teleology.
Pursuing metaphysics involves asking questions about the ultimate nature of reality. Kant suggested that metaphysics can be reformed thru epistemology. He suggested that by understanding the sources & limits of human knowledge we can ask fruitful metaphysical questions. He asked if an object can be known to have certain properties prior to the experience of that object. He concluded that all objects that the mind can think about must conform to its manner of thought. Therefore if the mind can think only in terms of causality–which he concluded that it does–then we can know prior to experiencing them that all objects we experience must either be a cause or an effect. However, it follows from this that it's possible that there are objects of such a nature that the mind cannot think of them, & so the principle of causality, for instance, cannot be applied outside experience: hence we cannot know, for example, whether the world always existed or if it had a cause. So the grand questions of speculative metaphysics are off limits, but the sciences are firmly grounded in laws of the mind. Kant believed himself to be creating a compromise between the empiricists & the rationalists. The empiricists believed that knowledge is acquired thru experience alone, but the rationalists maintained that such knowledge is open to Cartesian doubt and that reason alone provides us with knowledge. Kant argues, however, that using reason without applying it to experience will only lead to illusions, while experience will be purely subjective without first being subsumed under pure reason. Kant’s thought was very influential in Germany during his lifetime, moving philosophy beyond the debate between the rationalists & empiricists. The philosophers Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer saw themselves as correcting and expanding Kant's system, thus bringing about various forms of German Idealism. Kant continues to be a major influence on philosophy to this day, influencing both Analytic and Continental philosophy.
Pursuing metaphysics involves asking questions about the ultimate nature of reality. Kant suggested that metaphysics can be reformed thru epistemology. He suggested that by understanding the sources & limits of human knowledge we can ask fruitful metaphysical questions. He asked if an object can be known to have certain properties prior to the experience of that object. He concluded that all objects that the mind can think about must conform to its manner of thought. Therefore if the mind can think only in terms of causality–which he concluded that it does–then we can know prior to experiencing them that all objects we experience must either be a cause or an effect. However, it follows from this that it's possible that there are objects of such a nature that the mind cannot think of them, & so the principle of causality, for instance, cannot be applied outside experience: hence we cannot know, for example, whether the world always existed or if it had a cause. So the grand questions of speculative metaphysics are off limits, but the sciences are firmly grounded in laws of the mind. Kant believed himself to be creating a compromise between the empiricists & the rationalists. The empiricists believed that knowledge is acquired thru experience alone, but the rationalists maintained that such knowledge is open to Cartesian doubt and that reason alone provides us with knowledge. Kant argues, however, that using reason without applying it to experience will only lead to illusions, while experience will be purely subjective without first being subsumed under pure reason. Kant’s thought was very influential in Germany during his lifetime, moving philosophy beyond the debate between the rationalists & empiricists. The philosophers Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer saw themselves as correcting and expanding Kant's system, thus bringing about various forms of German Idealism. Kant continues to be a major influence on philosophy to this day, influencing both Analytic and Continental philosophy.
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February 11, 2024
Quién diría que Kant tenía algunos chistoretes bajo la manga.
November 30, 2022
Dreams of a Ghost-Seer Explained by Dreams of Metaphysics, 1766
Kant’s 1766 “Träume eines Geistersehers, erläutert durch Träume der Metaphysik” is directed towards the "charlatan" metaphysicians of his day, using Swedenborg's claims of spirit-visions as the central example. It is a cynical, scathing, and mocking criticism of Swedenborgian metaphysics, while simultaneously undermining the faulty Epistemology of Leibniz. Kant addresses “Mr. Schwedenberg” directly and analyzes his works methodically. This is one of his most obscure manuscript, and for good reasons. It is a winding work which pulls the reader into multiple directions and was criticized by Kant himself. Schopenhauer published a similar work in 1851 titled "Versuch über das Geistersehen und was damit zusammenhängt" (Attempt on ghost seeing and what is connected with it) where he mentions that this obsession over communicating with the beyond is in the Zeitgeist of the 17th and 18th century"
The ghosts, which were not banished as well as outlawed everywhere in the super-smart, past century, in spite of all earlier ones, have been rehabilitated in Germany, like magic before, during these last 25 years. Perhaps not unjustly. For the proofs against their existence were partly metaphysical, which, as such, stood on uncertain ground; partly empirical, which proved only that, in those cases where no accidental or deliberately arranged deception had been uncovered, there was nothing present that could have acted on the retina by reflection of the light rays, or on the tympanum by vibration of the air.
Schopenhauer largely agrees with Kant, but tries to provide more room for the experience of magic than Kant does. Even here in a small, anonymous early work, Kant is laying the foundation of his position as the “Newton of Morals”, splitting reality into two subdivisions between Form and Sense-Perception; an ontological divide between a Numinal and Phenomenological world. He creates a broader vision of Swedenborg's cosmological worldview and deconstructs it as ridiculous according to Enlightenment rationality, and even worse, immoral. He manages to make his critique of Swedenborg's anti-Humic in his statement that a real image of Metaphysics relies on living a moral life. Without this, there is no transcendent realities to be experienced. Schopenhauer, in his odd nesting of Phenomena within Noumena, denies the external existence of Ghosts, but allows for their existence within consciousness.
More broadly, he is sketching out the left and right delineators in his response to the Aristotelian metaphysics of Hume while trying to upload the Scientific advances of the Enlightenment. He uses Occam’s Razor against Swedenborg, using pure Enlightenment reason to deconstruct his claims which at points sounds Humic. But at the same time, he begins to back against a pure Newtonian mechanical, deterministic worldview: “For in the relations of cause and effect, of substance and action, philosophy serves at first to resolve the intricate phenomena and to bring such to simpler conceptions.” It is certainly his least anti-Enlightenment out of all of his works.
Emanuel Swedenborg was not a mere charlatan spiritualist. He was a dedicated scientist for many years, ran a scientific publication, and was an important advisor on geometry, chemistry, and metallurgy to the royal family of Sweden. He was the first know scientist to understand the concept of Neurons in the brain and charted the first ideals of Synaptic relays. His anatomical and physiological studies were decades ahead of his time. Much later in life, in his 50's, he began to have dreams and visions. He recorded these in dream journals. Later in life, he dedicated himself entirely to Biblical and Theological studies but strayed from Christian Orthodoxy into heavily mystical, spiritualist, and pluralistic lines of thought. He developed an entire theory of the relationship between the material and spiritual world and saw no conflict between believing in both.
Kant did not immediately discount Swedenborg's clairvoyant claims. He acquired Swedenborg's entire enigmatic Arcana Cœlestia (Heavenly Arcana or Heavenly Mysteries) and studied the whole thing before we have any record of his opinions. Written in Latin, Arcana Cœlestia is an inaccessible exegesis of scripture and a defense of his metaphysical view of Correspondence, or "simultaneous" levels of existence. Swedenborg claimed that this whole idea was revealed to him, in a similar fashion to Kant's claim that absolute morality is a factor of common sense, not a unique idea of his. Kant considered Swedenborg a serious scholar and academic, which might be why he published this criticism of his theories anonymously. Kant himself did not hold his Dreams of a Spirit-Seer in high esteem and criticized his own arguments against Swedenborg in his correspondence with Moses Mendelssohn years later. Perhaps this is why this work is nearly entirely unknown- it is sloppy and an immature version of Kant's dialectics.
Throughout Carl Jung’s philosophic substructure of Analytic Psychology, he used Kant’s dichotomy of the Neo-Platonic subdivision of the Numinal and Phenomenological world to support his mystical-scientific concept of Synchronicity, which Swedenborg’s Correspondence theory is a shoddy echo, and specifically cites Dreams of a Spirit-Seer:
We can see how Jung is combining Hegel and Kant with the idea of “absolute knowledge” and the dichotomy of the Numinal and Phenomenological. Kant was the first recorded philosopher (pre-dating newton by just a couple years) in his statement that gravity can act at a distance, foreshadowing Quantum Entanglement and Jungian-Einsteinian iteration of Panpsychist this experiment resurrected. There is an oceanic tautology between Kant and Jung's psychology in relation to the sophistry of Subject-Object perception. Jung misunderstands Kant’s criticism of the event as evidence for it: “This case is well authenticated. See report in Kant’s Dreams of a Spirit seer” even though the entire point of this work is to discredit the whole idea of interaction with a spirit world directly. Jungian philosophy is heavily influenced by German Idealism, and continued Kant’s work of making religious beliefs acceptable to a materialistic metaphysic.
However, both Kant, Hegel and Jung all articulate at different points that Rationalizing faith is a foolhardy attempt as the human psyche does not ultimately operate on presuppositional rational axoims, but Symbolism. Kant speaks of Archetypes guiding the pneumatic world long before Jung did:
Ultimately, Kant sees these questions of synchronicity, spiritualism and mysticism broadly (eventually he would include simple prayer in this category, which would get him in trouble with the Lutheran church) as useless to the primary task of human life, which is to live moral lives according to God’s Rational purpose:
The Metaphysician of Konigsburg
1755 General Natural History and Theory of Heaven: https://bit.ly/3FbUrcK
1764 Observations on the feeling of the beautiful: https://bit.ly/3uf7XWJ
1766 Dreams of a Ghost-Seer: https://bit.ly/3XIPFut
1783 Prolegomena to any future metaphysics: https://bit.ly/3uewAD0
1785 Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: https://bit.ly/3XGObRt
1786 Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science: https://bit.ly/3GUz4Ob
1787 Critique of Pure Reason: https://bit.ly/3gMJ0i9
1788 Critique of Practical Reason: https://bit.ly/3UdFBGZ
1790 Critique of Judgment: https://bit.ly/3FdzkGK
1793 Religion within the Limits of Mere Reason: https://bit.ly/3FdEL8E
1795 Toward Eternal Peace: https://bit.ly/3ioyLRH
1797 Metaphysics of Morals: https://bit.ly/3gNkddY
1798 The Dispute of the Faculties: https://bit.ly/3AVMVQO
Kant’s 1766 “Träume eines Geistersehers, erläutert durch Träume der Metaphysik” is directed towards the "charlatan" metaphysicians of his day, using Swedenborg's claims of spirit-visions as the central example. It is a cynical, scathing, and mocking criticism of Swedenborgian metaphysics, while simultaneously undermining the faulty Epistemology of Leibniz. Kant addresses “Mr. Schwedenberg” directly and analyzes his works methodically. This is one of his most obscure manuscript, and for good reasons. It is a winding work which pulls the reader into multiple directions and was criticized by Kant himself. Schopenhauer published a similar work in 1851 titled "Versuch über das Geistersehen und was damit zusammenhängt" (Attempt on ghost seeing and what is connected with it) where he mentions that this obsession over communicating with the beyond is in the Zeitgeist of the 17th and 18th century"
The ghosts, which were not banished as well as outlawed everywhere in the super-smart, past century, in spite of all earlier ones, have been rehabilitated in Germany, like magic before, during these last 25 years. Perhaps not unjustly. For the proofs against their existence were partly metaphysical, which, as such, stood on uncertain ground; partly empirical, which proved only that, in those cases where no accidental or deliberately arranged deception had been uncovered, there was nothing present that could have acted on the retina by reflection of the light rays, or on the tympanum by vibration of the air.
Schopenhauer largely agrees with Kant, but tries to provide more room for the experience of magic than Kant does. Even here in a small, anonymous early work, Kant is laying the foundation of his position as the “Newton of Morals”, splitting reality into two subdivisions between Form and Sense-Perception; an ontological divide between a Numinal and Phenomenological world. He creates a broader vision of Swedenborg's cosmological worldview and deconstructs it as ridiculous according to Enlightenment rationality, and even worse, immoral. He manages to make his critique of Swedenborg's anti-Humic in his statement that a real image of Metaphysics relies on living a moral life. Without this, there is no transcendent realities to be experienced. Schopenhauer, in his odd nesting of Phenomena within Noumena, denies the external existence of Ghosts, but allows for their existence within consciousness.
More broadly, he is sketching out the left and right delineators in his response to the Aristotelian metaphysics of Hume while trying to upload the Scientific advances of the Enlightenment. He uses Occam’s Razor against Swedenborg, using pure Enlightenment reason to deconstruct his claims which at points sounds Humic. But at the same time, he begins to back against a pure Newtonian mechanical, deterministic worldview: “For in the relations of cause and effect, of substance and action, philosophy serves at first to resolve the intricate phenomena and to bring such to simpler conceptions.” It is certainly his least anti-Enlightenment out of all of his works.
Emanuel Swedenborg was not a mere charlatan spiritualist. He was a dedicated scientist for many years, ran a scientific publication, and was an important advisor on geometry, chemistry, and metallurgy to the royal family of Sweden. He was the first know scientist to understand the concept of Neurons in the brain and charted the first ideals of Synaptic relays. His anatomical and physiological studies were decades ahead of his time. Much later in life, in his 50's, he began to have dreams and visions. He recorded these in dream journals. Later in life, he dedicated himself entirely to Biblical and Theological studies but strayed from Christian Orthodoxy into heavily mystical, spiritualist, and pluralistic lines of thought. He developed an entire theory of the relationship between the material and spiritual world and saw no conflict between believing in both.
Kant did not immediately discount Swedenborg's clairvoyant claims. He acquired Swedenborg's entire enigmatic Arcana Cœlestia (Heavenly Arcana or Heavenly Mysteries) and studied the whole thing before we have any record of his opinions. Written in Latin, Arcana Cœlestia is an inaccessible exegesis of scripture and a defense of his metaphysical view of Correspondence, or "simultaneous" levels of existence. Swedenborg claimed that this whole idea was revealed to him, in a similar fashion to Kant's claim that absolute morality is a factor of common sense, not a unique idea of his. Kant considered Swedenborg a serious scholar and academic, which might be why he published this criticism of his theories anonymously. Kant himself did not hold his Dreams of a Spirit-Seer in high esteem and criticized his own arguments against Swedenborg in his correspondence with Moses Mendelssohn years later. Perhaps this is why this work is nearly entirely unknown- it is sloppy and an immature version of Kant's dialectics.
Throughout Carl Jung’s philosophic substructure of Analytic Psychology, he used Kant’s dichotomy of the Neo-Platonic subdivision of the Numinal and Phenomenological world to support his mystical-scientific concept of Synchronicity, which Swedenborg’s Correspondence theory is a shoddy echo, and specifically cites Dreams of a Spirit-Seer:
The effective (numinous) agents in the unconscious are the archetypes. By far the greatest number of spontaneous synchronistic phenomena that I have had occasion to observe and analyze can easily be shown to have a direct connection with an archetype. This, in itself, is an irrepressible, psychoid factor… when, for instance, the vision arose in Swedenborg’s mind of a fire in Stockholm, there was a real fire raging there at the same time, without there being any demonstrable or even thinkable connection between the two… we must assume that there was a lowing of the threshold of consciousness which gave him access to “absolute knowledge”. The fire in Stockholm was, in a sense, burning in him too. For the unconscious psyche space and time seem to be relative; that is to say, knowledge finds itself in a space-time continuum in which space is no longer space, not time time.
We can see how Jung is combining Hegel and Kant with the idea of “absolute knowledge” and the dichotomy of the Numinal and Phenomenological. Kant was the first recorded philosopher (pre-dating newton by just a couple years) in his statement that gravity can act at a distance, foreshadowing Quantum Entanglement and Jungian-Einsteinian iteration of Panpsychist this experiment resurrected. There is an oceanic tautology between Kant and Jung's psychology in relation to the sophistry of Subject-Object perception. Jung misunderstands Kant’s criticism of the event as evidence for it: “This case is well authenticated. See report in Kant’s Dreams of a Spirit seer” even though the entire point of this work is to discredit the whole idea of interaction with a spirit world directly. Jungian philosophy is heavily influenced by German Idealism, and continued Kant’s work of making religious beliefs acceptable to a materialistic metaphysic.
However, both Kant, Hegel and Jung all articulate at different points that Rationalizing faith is a foolhardy attempt as the human psyche does not ultimately operate on presuppositional rational axoims, but Symbolism. Kant speaks of Archetypes guiding the pneumatic world long before Jung did:
The soul's world is not a world of spirits, but a world of archetypes, which are accompanying ideas of those of the other world, and therefore, what I think as a spirit is not remembered by me as a human being, and vice versa, my state as a human being does not come into the idea of myself as a spirit at all
Ultimately, Kant sees these questions of synchronicity, spiritualism and mysticism broadly (eventually he would include simple prayer in this category, which would get him in trouble with the Lutheran church) as useless to the primary task of human life, which is to live moral lives according to God’s Rational purpose:
Let us therefore leave to speculation and to the care of idle minds all noisy doctrinal statements of such remote objects…. They are, in fact, indifferent to us, and the momentary appearance of reasons for or against may perhaps decide the applause of the schools, but hardly anything about the future fate of the righteous.
The Metaphysician of Konigsburg
1755 General Natural History and Theory of Heaven: https://bit.ly/3FbUrcK
1764 Observations on the feeling of the beautiful: https://bit.ly/3uf7XWJ
1766 Dreams of a Ghost-Seer: https://bit.ly/3XIPFut
1783 Prolegomena to any future metaphysics: https://bit.ly/3uewAD0
1785 Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: https://bit.ly/3XGObRt
1786 Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science: https://bit.ly/3GUz4Ob
1787 Critique of Pure Reason: https://bit.ly/3gMJ0i9
1788 Critique of Practical Reason: https://bit.ly/3UdFBGZ
1790 Critique of Judgment: https://bit.ly/3FdzkGK
1793 Religion within the Limits of Mere Reason: https://bit.ly/3FdEL8E
1795 Toward Eternal Peace: https://bit.ly/3ioyLRH
1797 Metaphysics of Morals: https://bit.ly/3gNkddY
1798 The Dispute of the Faculties: https://bit.ly/3AVMVQO
November 17, 2021
Detta är en av de mest begripliga texterna av Kant jag har läst. I princip försöker den uttolka gränserna för mänsklig kunskap, i motsats till mänsklig intuition. Oavsett intresse för Swedenborg eller ej, och denna skrift brukar tydligen tolkas som ett svar på Swedenborgs andelära, så innehåller den definitioner som är av värde.
August 19, 2024
A więc, to co przeczytałam u Kanta, to był w całości profesorski żarcik. Zaczął od tego, że idąc śladem najsprytniejszych filozofów, najpierw będzie prawił na wysokim poziomie abstrakcyjności po to, by na końcu sięgnąć po argumenty z doświadczenia i w ten sposób olśnić czytelnika. Troszkę naśmiewa się ze Swedeborga i tych, co wierzyli w jego historie, ale robi to bardzo poczciwie. Wspomina o tym, że nie ma nic “uwłaczającego” w tym, że zajmie się przez chwilę sferą oszustw i manipulacji, bo w sumie co za różnica czy filozofa zwiodą pozorne dowody rozumu, czy wiara w kłamliwe opowiadania... PS: Przytacza ze trzy legendy miejskie z epoki. Najlepsza jest ta opowieść, w której jakaś kobieta poprosiła Swedenborga o to, żeby skontaktował się z jej zmarłym mężem, bo jubiler twierdził, że mąż nie opłacił sreber przed śmiercią. Żonka nie dawała wiary, bo mąż był bardzo uczciwy i skrupulatny. Swedenborg wskazał odpowiednią szafę, w efekcie kwit (na dowód zakupu u jubilera) się znalazł. Zaradna żonka.
Tymczasem, Pan Swedenborg dzielił swoje zjawiska paranormalne na trzy rodzaje. 1. oddzielenie duszy od ciała: stan pośredni pomiędzy snem a czuwaniem (tu widział, słyszał, dotykał duchów). 2. Omamienie przez duchy (chodził po ulicy nie błądząc, będąc jednocześnie w zupełnie innym kraju, widząc inne domy, ludzi. Taka podróż astralna). 3. Zwykłe codziennie odczuwanie świata duchów dostępne każdemu, ale tylko Swedenborg robił z niego użytek, bo twierdził, że jego wnętrze jest prawdziwie otwarte.
Co na to Kant? No ogólnie nie był fanem. Wyłapałam głównie dwa główne tropy myślowe (ale pewnie było ich trochę więcej). Po pierwsze pisał, że jeśli oba światy (zmarłych i żywych) mogą się przenikać i są wśród żywych ludzie zdolni do komunikacji z duszą zmarłego, to w sumie to trochę dziwne, że jest to zjawisko aż tak rzadkie… Czemu ta komunikacja między światami nie zdarza się każdemu z nas nagminnie? Po co ta instytucja ludzi-mediów? Po drugie: zauważył, że jeśli jest to faktycznie jakiś rzadki dar, na który trzeba być specjalnie otwartym (jak utrzymują jasnowidzący), to z kolei trochę dziwne, że za tym darem widzenia i słyszenia zmarłych nie poszło odebranie czegoś ze zdolności świata doczesnego (np. zdolności zwykłego widzenia).
Takich spostrzeżeń było więcej, ale raz, że nie wszystko byłam w stanie zrozumieć, a dwa spamiętać. Niemniej styl ma ładny. Tutaj próbka stylu wysokiego: "Arystoteles mówi gdzieś: Gdy czuwamy mamy świat wspólny; gdy śnimy, każdy ma swój własny. Sądzę, że można ostatnie zdanie odwrócić i powiedzieć: skoro każdy z ludzi ma swój odrębny świat, domyślać się należy, że każdy z nich marzy. Wychodząc z tego stanowiska, skoro rozważamy twórców urojonych światów myśli, z których każdy mieszka spokojnie w swoim własnym, wykluczając bezwzględnie inne, zadowolnimy się tym, że wobec sprzeczności ich wizji zaczekamy cierpliwie, nim ci panowie prześnią sny swoje”.
A tu próbka stylu niskiego, gdy robi sobie jaja: "Nie będę miał za złe czytelnikowi, jeśli, zamiast uważać wizjonerów za półobywateli drugiego świata, zaliczy ich po prostu do kandydatów do domu zdrowia. Skoro więc staniemy na tym stanowisku, musi się zmienić i nasz sposób traktowa nia podobnych zwolenników świata duchów, a jeśli niegdyś uważano za konieczne palić niektórych z nich, możemy zadowolnić się dziś tym, że przepiszemy im środki przeczyszczające. Wobec takiego położenia rzeczy staje się zbyteczną rzeczą sięgać tak głęboko i poszukiwać, przy pomocy metafizyki, tajemnic w rozgorączkowanych mózgach, ulegających złudzeniu wizjonerów. Przenikliwy wzrok Hudibras'asam tylko mógłby rozstrzygnąć zagadkę; zdaniem jego bowiem, gdy wiatr hypochondryczny dmie we wnętrznościach, to wszystko zależy od jego kierunku, jeśli zwraca się ku dołowi wynika stąd.... ; jeśli ku górze— staje się zjawiskiem lub świętym objawieniem".
Tymczasem, Pan Swedenborg dzielił swoje zjawiska paranormalne na trzy rodzaje. 1. oddzielenie duszy od ciała: stan pośredni pomiędzy snem a czuwaniem (tu widział, słyszał, dotykał duchów). 2. Omamienie przez duchy (chodził po ulicy nie błądząc, będąc jednocześnie w zupełnie innym kraju, widząc inne domy, ludzi. Taka podróż astralna). 3. Zwykłe codziennie odczuwanie świata duchów dostępne każdemu, ale tylko Swedenborg robił z niego użytek, bo twierdził, że jego wnętrze jest prawdziwie otwarte.
Co na to Kant? No ogólnie nie był fanem. Wyłapałam głównie dwa główne tropy myślowe (ale pewnie było ich trochę więcej). Po pierwsze pisał, że jeśli oba światy (zmarłych i żywych) mogą się przenikać i są wśród żywych ludzie zdolni do komunikacji z duszą zmarłego, to w sumie to trochę dziwne, że jest to zjawisko aż tak rzadkie… Czemu ta komunikacja między światami nie zdarza się każdemu z nas nagminnie? Po co ta instytucja ludzi-mediów? Po drugie: zauważył, że jeśli jest to faktycznie jakiś rzadki dar, na który trzeba być specjalnie otwartym (jak utrzymują jasnowidzący), to z kolei trochę dziwne, że za tym darem widzenia i słyszenia zmarłych nie poszło odebranie czegoś ze zdolności świata doczesnego (np. zdolności zwykłego widzenia).
Takich spostrzeżeń było więcej, ale raz, że nie wszystko byłam w stanie zrozumieć, a dwa spamiętać. Niemniej styl ma ładny. Tutaj próbka stylu wysokiego: "Arystoteles mówi gdzieś: Gdy czuwamy mamy świat wspólny; gdy śnimy, każdy ma swój własny. Sądzę, że można ostatnie zdanie odwrócić i powiedzieć: skoro każdy z ludzi ma swój odrębny świat, domyślać się należy, że każdy z nich marzy. Wychodząc z tego stanowiska, skoro rozważamy twórców urojonych światów myśli, z których każdy mieszka spokojnie w swoim własnym, wykluczając bezwzględnie inne, zadowolnimy się tym, że wobec sprzeczności ich wizji zaczekamy cierpliwie, nim ci panowie prześnią sny swoje”.
A tu próbka stylu niskiego, gdy robi sobie jaja: "Nie będę miał za złe czytelnikowi, jeśli, zamiast uważać wizjonerów za półobywateli drugiego świata, zaliczy ich po prostu do kandydatów do domu zdrowia. Skoro więc staniemy na tym stanowisku, musi się zmienić i nasz sposób traktowa nia podobnych zwolenników świata duchów, a jeśli niegdyś uważano za konieczne palić niektórych z nich, możemy zadowolnić się dziś tym, że przepiszemy im środki przeczyszczające. Wobec takiego położenia rzeczy staje się zbyteczną rzeczą sięgać tak głęboko i poszukiwać, przy pomocy metafizyki, tajemnic w rozgorączkowanych mózgach, ulegających złudzeniu wizjonerów. Przenikliwy wzrok Hudibras'asam tylko mógłby rozstrzygnąć zagadkę; zdaniem jego bowiem, gdy wiatr hypochondryczny dmie we wnętrznościach, to wszystko zależy od jego kierunku, jeśli zwraca się ku dołowi wynika stąd.... ; jeśli ku górze— staje się zjawiskiem lub świętym objawieniem".
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February 28, 2024Kant turns Ghostbuster in this satirical enquiry into the claims of the mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, who, it was said, possessed psychic abilities and could receive visions from the spirit world. Comparing the spooky claims of kooks like Swedenborg to the metaphysical speculations of rationalist philosophers like Leibniz, Kant counsels dreamers of both stripes to awaken from their dogmatic slumber. It's a short book and a lot easier to read than The Critique of Pure Reason, plus the English translation is in the public domain.
July 11, 2025
Inizialmente e’ molto avvincente ma poi sprofonda in un registro linguistico medio con una sintassi poco semplice che ha reso difficile comprensione e passione della lettura. i post-it utilizzati sono stati per frasi carine e per ricordare parole complesse affianco alle quali ho scritto la rispettiva definizione.
consiglio a gente già informata o che si cimenta molto attivamente nella lettura.
consiglio a gente già informata o che si cimenta molto attivamente nella lettura.
July 7, 2024
Assolutamente da rileggere, mi ha trasportato in un bellissimo viaggio filosofico
January 2, 2025
Kant: Ignoriert GEIST+WAHRHEIT! Jakob Böhme/Lorber Bertha Dudde! Gerd Gutemann! M Kahir Walter Lutz Leopold Engel Max Seltmann K Eggenstein!
June 14, 2024
Ein Buch wie aus der Zeit gefallen , Kant nimmt mit dieser Kritik Swedenborg's Buch "Himmel und Hölle" auseinander .
February 21, 2017
Ипохондрики готовы себя убедить в чём угодно, даже в том, чего не существует, причём уверяют себя так, что это начинает существовать в действительности — сиё есть свойство мозга сохранять разум в порядке, иначе наступают непоправимые изменения, после которых следует необратимое изменение в восприятии реальности, приводящее к катастрофическим изменениям в понимании происходящего, вследствие чего надуманное окончательно подменяет собой действительность, и человек сходит с ума. Такова характеристика ипохондрии от тех, кто удосужился ознакомиться с мнением Канта насчёт восьмитомника теософа и мистика Эммануила Сведенборга «Небесные тайны». Кант изложил мысли анонимно, дав им ироническое название «Грёзы духовидца, пояснённые грёзами метафизики».
(c) Trounin
(c) Trounin
August 14, 2017
Dio mio che orrenda merda ... ?
In effetti, i filosofi riescono a parlare per ore di stronzate inutili, come la prefazione di Trinciapollo-Cosobue, per non dire assolutamente nulla o per lo più cose praticamente prive di qualunque genere di senso e attaccabili da una ragione di tipo analitico da qualunque punto. Cosa che effettivamente anche Kant (che personalmente mi piacerebbe prendere per il bavero, scuoterlo e schiaffeggiarlo, urlandogli "ma perché sei così coglione, perché?!?!") dice poco dopo. Al di là del fatto che segoni mentali di questo genere sul mondo "degli spiriti" sono qualcosa di abominevole anche per il più illetterato dei cretini di questo pianeta, e riuscire a terminare la lettura non mi è stato per niente facile, la conclusione alla quale arriva è: se esiste un mondo degli "spiriti", esso è imperscrutabile con la ragione e tantovale tornare a zappare i campi.
In effetti, i filosofi riescono a parlare per ore di stronzate inutili, come la prefazione di Trinciapollo-Cosobue, per non dire assolutamente nulla o per lo più cose praticamente prive di qualunque genere di senso e attaccabili da una ragione di tipo analitico da qualunque punto. Cosa che effettivamente anche Kant (che personalmente mi piacerebbe prendere per il bavero, scuoterlo e schiaffeggiarlo, urlandogli "ma perché sei così coglione, perché?!?!") dice poco dopo. Al di là del fatto che segoni mentali di questo genere sul mondo "degli spiriti" sono qualcosa di abominevole anche per il più illetterato dei cretini di questo pianeta, e riuscire a terminare la lettura non mi è stato per niente facile, la conclusione alla quale arriva è: se esiste un mondo degli "spiriti", esso è imperscrutabile con la ragione e tantovale tornare a zappare i campi.
November 30, 2013
Very nice light reading, I was smiling a lot while reading this very unusual text of Kant.
March 16, 2016
"Überdem war ein großes Werk gekauft und, welches noch schlimmer ist, gelesen worden, und diese Mühe sollte nicht verloren sein. "
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December 22, 2020Never liked Kant and still don't like him, but this is a really good and funny critique/satire
December 23, 2025
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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