Third Point - The Greatest Philosophers

Third Point - The Greatest Philosophers The third aspect of my philosophical stance - and excluding Christ who is more than wise the son of God - points to Kant as the philosopher of modernity who best "explained" the essence of Christianity. It did so in a rational or philosophical way (and so I say "explain"), but without nullifying metaphysics. That is why he is the great philosopher of modernity, just as philosophers and saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas were in the Middle Ages, Plato and Aristotle (especially the latter) in antiquity and Karl Popper (or the most recent Roger Scruton) in our contemporaneity. In this regard, it is curious that Karl Popper stated that they would not hear him speak ill of religion. It is also intriguing that Aristotle occupies a prominent place on my personal list, and that all other philosophers end up, in the inverse reason between chronology and philosophical quality, for losing some value. I must say that I am not a great connoisseur of the philosophy of language that seems to subsist in Karl Popper's thinking, and I also consider that although Kant's philosophy approaches Christianity - especially in the practice of its ethics - it is also this philosophy that remains. short of what, in my view, must be a genuine Christian who is philosophical 'realist' - believes in philosophical realism (even if it does not imply that we can know reality itself) - and that not only (or only) thinks of God as you know God exists. By the way of mentioning Kant, it must be said, of course, that all his philosophy adds little or nothing to what the great Aristotle had already said. My admiration for Kant stems - beyond, of course, his enormous and admirable intelligence - from what I consider to have been the enormous rational effort this thinker has made to tell us the truth (and thus prevent some form of religious obscurity). . This, of course, arouses my admiration (I have made a thesis on Kant's general thinking), just as it seems that Kant has resolved some of the aporias left open by thinkers like Aristotle. At the same time, Kant contributed to the laicization of the state, to the idea of ​​a kind of secular global government - even though, in fact, the philosopher pointed to a league of nations - that is to say, this thinker is over. for contributing, perhaps unintentionally, to some misconceptions related to an intrusion which, perhaps, would be unnecessary of the state or politics in the religious and metaphysical sphere of societies, which, in turn, is primal to the state itself and whose same societies and the same state owe you the highest values. Of course, a state should not impose a religion, but neither should it impose atheism on a society that is mostly religious. But this is or is what the state did when it removed religious symbols from public space: the promotion of atheism. In this respect, Kant's philosophy of course loses its practical value, especially when we find - and by way of example only - that the deaths caused by revolutions such as the French were considerably superior to the "damage" done by the Inquisition itself (hitherto). , there is a certain sympathy or approximation of my thought to the monarchical cause, especially with regard to its willingness to preserve the highest values). It is also important to note that Kant's lack of knowledge of the philosophical tradition - especially the Aristotelian one - may in fact have been effective without, of course, diminishing his philosophical capacity. With some legitimacy, I can also consider this thinker in the wake of those who eventually contributed to the annulment of the free, knowledgeable, and moral subject, for even taking into account the safeguarding of ideas - which postulates - of soul, world, and God; As well as his respectable and even unbeatable categorical imperative, Kant ends up intruding this same subject into the world of phenomena, which seems counterproductive to me precisely because he considers that this subject is, in moral and / or essential terms, clearly and not hypothetically - still that a postulate is more than a hypothesis - above the material world (but not as a superior subject in terms of knowledge (we are always miserable beings) - we are, in fact, distinct from the rest of nature's animals, that is to say: we are made Kant's claim that the noumenon or reality itself is inaccessible to the man or subject he knows may in fact lead to the following interpretation: there is something (not unlike Freud's unconscious society in Marxist thinkers, language in so many other thinkers, and in this case Kant's reality itself which, say, prevents the subject from being a rational agent, that is, a free and moral agent who cannot be for always hidden reasons and / or third parties. There is a reflection here that can and should be made, and a whole set of excuses to nullify what truly critical consciousness is and which, in my view, is inseparable from the idea of ​​an observer as an external reference and of which our consciousness and freedom participate. Kant's ideas of noumenon as a chaotic reality are many that the subject "organizes" and should make us reflect. In any case, I am also led to identify reality itself or noumenon with God's Mystery itself (even if one thing is God and another the world), which somehow protects Kant's thinking from the accusations of annulment. of the moral subject. Concluding my reflection on Kant, there seems indeed to be, and from Descartes, a kind of megalomaniac mental theater performed by a subject who seems unable to accept the reality of his life, his miserable condition of simply not to be above reality to observe it or the world - we are not God and when we want to be we are clearly losing spirituality. Kant's transcendental self is thus a kind of pseudo-God like Deacartes's who, by wanting to put us out of reality as neutral, objective, and external observers, we are losing the humility essential to the condition of moral life - a life that is only moral because it is being observed by God; It is only moral when we accept the fragility and misery of human life. Kant thus seems to place the subject, on the one hand, on the plane of something he is not truly aware of a megalomaniac transcendental objectivity as the pseudo-Gods of absolute objectivity, on the other hand, weakening ethics by presupposing the soul and God as postulates and not as actual realities. Once again, it seems to be the Gospel and the Person of Christ giving us the concrete truths that we really need. Martinho Moura