As if everyone in the class reads my blog. In fact, I am quite sure that less than 50% of the class even cares what the rest writes on their blogs. Actually, if anyone else in the class reads my blog I will be surprised.
I mean, they haven't commented on anything. Granted, that's a smart move. I was under the impression last semester that Dr. Brewton had mandated we were all to use Blogger so we could comment on everyone else'se blog. So I commented on someone's blog. I promptly felt like a creepy stalker and have wanted to delete that comment ever since. (Is it possible to do so?) I wondered if I should post another comment apologizing, decided that would be equally creepy, pondered apologizing in person, and decided that would be really creepy. I have settled for pretending it never happened and trying not to randomly freak out in said person's presence.
Here's to hoping said person has forgotten it entirely.
ANYWAY, back to the business at hand. A Refutation of Moral Relativism, by Peter Kreeft, page 48-49:
"[Kant] called his most important idea his "Copernican revolution in philosophy". That was the notion that the human mind makes the truth instead of discovering it, that truth is formed by the human mind. And that includes moral truth. Kant called true morality "autonomous", that is, man-made rather than "heteronomous", made by another, by God. So our will makes the moral law, not God's. We make it; we don't discover it. I'd call that subjectivism. It's nine-thenths of the way to moral relativism. It's not yet moral relativism because Kant also believed that all minds necessarily worked the same way and created the same morality-- like logic or math. So morality was universal and necessary for Kant but not objective."
Of course, the temptation with such a values system as subjectivism is that if you have made up your own morality, you can change it whenever and whyever you want. (Is 'whyever' a word? If not, it should be. It sounds cool.) And so, to continue with our journey into Kreeft:
"Kant tried to prevent that, but he failed. He tried to prevent it by arguing that I can't logically succeed in creating my own morality contrary to the universal Golden Rule, and absolute "Categorical Imperative". It's logically inconsistent to will that everyone lie or steal when I do. But he failed because why should I care about logic if I made that up too?"
You have to admit, it makes sense in a rather chilling way... And so Kant seems to have realized the destructive tide his theory would unleash, and tried to stem it. However, he should have known it wouldn't work. Because along came Hegel, who destroyed the last bit of objective reality Kant still allowed. To wit:
"Kant called it "things in themselves". He believed that this was something real but unknowable. Hegel argued: if it's unknowable, if we can't know it, then how can you know it's there? Knowing the unknowable enough to know it exists- that's a self-contradiction. Kant tried to limit thought, to draw a border to thought; but to do that, you have to think both sides of the border."
As if attempting (and doing a good job of it) to destroy common belief in objective reality were not enough, Hegel didn't stop there, but further postulated an idea that helped form relativism: "universal process. Everything flose; everything is in flux. Truth itself evolves, even God evolves, through human history, according to Hegel."
And then popped up Mr. Doom-and-Gloom, Friedrich Nietzsche, who announced, "God is dead." I find it darkly ironic and amusing, in a schadenfreude sort of way, that he said a man would go insane without God, which he did.
Have you made it all the way through this blog post? Congratulations! I would give you a big gold star if I could.
However, since I can't, I'll give you this picture from Catholic Memes:
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
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