The Problem: Freedom in Nature

[coberst]

The Problem: Freedom in Nature

Dewey’s Pragmatism is a modern elaboration of Kant’s Critique.

Kant’s philosophy informs us that wo/man is a creature immersed in a transcendent nature. This immersion leads to a limitation of knowledge. Wo/man cannot ‘know’ nature in itself. Humans are forever isolated from an epistemology that can comprehend the natural world.

Wo/man can only know that part of nature that nature has empowered the creature to know. Truth shall forever elude the mind of men and women. The world that we think is ‘real’ is only a small part of Reality and Reality we will never ever know.

Hobbes informs us that we humans are fated to live in a nasty and brutish manner within a nature that cannot care how we live. Wo/man is limited by its nature as a creature seeking only to satisfy his or her own appetites.

Kant, followed by Dewey and others, saw a different fate than that which Hobbes defined; the fact is that wo/man is not totally an atom drifting in a mechanistic world that is determined by Newtonian laws. Rather, humans are not just atoms but are self-energized creatures who can mold there own destiny by becoming partners with the natural environment and not mere passive slaves.

The question upon which we must focus is ‘how can wo/man find freedom that is distinctly human in this natural world’? The answer to this question is that men and women must create a new reality of its own and to continue to create and expand it.

Dewey restated Kant’s conclusion with the observation “cosmos examined by a speck of cosmos; Dewey declared that “truth is two-faced. He concluded that it is reality “as discovered by man and is not reality “in-itself. Truth is the result of human groping and knowing; “it is always on the make.

Pragmatic wo/man judges truth in only the practical manner, if the knowledge is meaningful and useful to men and women in their voyage then it is true (until proven to be false). Pragmatism points out that there are geometrical, mathematical, and logical truths but these are arrived at within a closed system unrelated to action. Such truths are absolute by definition within their closed domain and are not arrived at in the scope of human action. Such truths are not matters of fact and human search is for matters of fact upon which to base human action. Action itself is the main determining factor for truth in practical matters.

Rather, humans are not just atoms but are self-energized creatures who can mold there own destiny by becoming partners with the natural environment and not mere passive slaves. This seems to me to be the heart of the matter to which Becker is drawing our attention. Becker finds that wo/man is entirely too passive in accepting what appears on the surface of reality. We fail to mold our destiny in light of our nature and thereby we too easily accept what is formed for us by those who use us for their interest. We are the bull constantly focusing upon the cape rather than the reality behind the moving cape. We must find a means to energize our self sufficiently to take control of our destiny.

Ideas and quotes from “Beyond Alienation by Ernest Becker