Friday 8 January 2010

Kant Contra Kleist

Go read this excellent piece on the destruction of the talented German writer Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) by Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. In the comments section, Myrhaf ponders Nietzsche's reaction to Kant - the common view seems to be that Nietzsche accepted Kant's subjectivism, but I'm not so sure. Apart from the passages in Nietzsche which seem to heap contempt upon subjectivism, there is his characterization of the "will to truth" as merely another form of his infamous "will to power", which I take simply as a recognition that a man's grasp of reality is necessary for acting purposefully - as Rand herself insisted.

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