Weishaupt and Kant

Written by Socrates

Adam Weishaupt is best known as the founder of the illuminati but he was also a popular philosopher of his time, leaning mostly towards Empiricism.

He made three polemics against Immanuel Kant, declaring his philosophy leads to subjectivism  or the denial of all reality that is independent of our passing states of consciousness.

The charges are presented thus: 
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  • We know nothing but appearances that are represented ‘in us’
  • Thing-in-itself is incompatible with his critical principles
  • Objectivity consists in nothing more than the conformity of a representation to a rule, but it is possible that the representation does not correspond to reality itself
  • Causality is only a subjective rule of the understanding which is inapplicable to things-in-themselves, but this implies that we cannot get outside our representations in order to know their causes or origins.

    Another interesting ‘turn’ for Weishaupt was that he left the practice of monasticism and strongly believed in the importance of a teacher, but he differed with Kant who believed that intuition had a part to play and the individual could find their own way.

    How true, or significant these charges against Kant are and whatever else may be added to Weishaupt the philosopher, is the subject of this thread.

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