درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The experience of our conscience belongs in the same category as feeling, thinking and wanting. However, it has a special aspect, namely the presence of other human beings as absolute entities. The process of experience is concerned with the way to best promote your own interests, with how far you will go in actualising your essential characteristics as an absolute entity. The discussion of our urge for survival shows that we can go quite far in that respect, and that to actualise that urge, there are in fact no boundaries; everything is permitted. The same can be said about actualising our other essential characteristics, but the difference is that our need to do so is perhaps less cogently present; it is not our life, or at least not our continued material existence, that is at stake. Nonetheless, we can and may even choose to go to extremes in this respect and thus to give ourselves priority over others. Respect for the interests of others is based on self-respect, which may lead you to decide to subject your dealings with other people to a set of standards for yourself. Here we enter the area of morals and ethics, to which we can attach a complete moral philosophy and on the basis of a belief, a moral theology. At the end of this road is total love of yourself and others, because you have come to realise that it is the only way that can lead to the fourth essential characteristic of human beings as absolute entities, namely self-fulfilment. You will then have developed in a way that allows you to give yourself and others the scope we need as absolute entities (compassion, solidarity). Self-fulfilment is achieved through self-development, i.e. discovering and honing our gifts and talents and thus finding our own identity (development), a process by which the lives of human beings as absolute entities acquire purpose (the search for meaning). Self-fulfilment is self-actualisation, the state that results from the realisation of the essential characteristics of human beings as absolute entities, and it leads to satisfaction derived from ourselves or our activities, a sense of being satisfied with what we have accomplished.

The architectonic is key for situating Kant’s understanding of science in the coming century. For Kant the faculty of reason turns to ideas to form a complete system. The coherence of the system rests on these ideas. In contrast to technical unity which can be abstracted a posteriori, architectonic ideas are the source of a priori unity for the system of reason because they connect our reasonable pursuit to essential human ends. Given Kant’s focus on mathematics, in the architectonic and his critical philosophy more generally, we must have some sense of the architectonic idea of mathematics. In this paper, I argue for the key principles of the architectonic idea of mathematics: 1) because mathematics is grounded in a priori intuition, it is a peculiarly human activity; 2) the method of mathematics is one of a priori construction, a method only mathematics can employ and: 3) the objects of mathematics are extensive magnitudes. Given these principles, we can use the architectonic idea to have some clarity about how mathematics has dealt with historical development.

The Thing-in-Itself has been contentious issue within Kantian philosophy. Initially, it seems like an unfortunate side-effect of Kant’s distinction between phenomena and noumena. This article deals with this issue in a different manner, attempting to re-situate the Thing-in-Itself within Kantian philosophy, albeit from an anthropological rather than a critical angle. The anthropological works of Kant fully recognize that subjectivity and lived experience, as well as a thoroughgoing cognitive gradualism are necessary to “orient ourselves in thinking”. By reading the importance of the Thing-in-Itself from the anthropological viewpoint of Otto Friedrich Bollnow and the Kyoto School philosophy of Ueda Shizuteru, I argue that in all its negativity, the Thing-in-Itself constitutes the outer expanse of thought. Connecting this exposition with contemporary thinking on actancy and ecology, and following the Romantic tradition represented by Schopenhauer and Schelling, I argue that the Thing-in-Itself can be grasped indirectly and non-conceptually. As such, it constitutes the ground of thought. This insight makes Kant’s initially problematic concept directly relevant for our current ecological predicament, through which we realize the necessity for epistemic humility and embracing the unknown or the noumenal dimension that we cannot conceptually represent.

The paper concentrates on the philosophical discourses of four thinkers – Soren Kierkegaard, M. K. Gandhi, R. D. Ranade and B. R. Ambedkar on Ethics and Religion. Soren Kierkegaard, whose journey in philosophy made him pass through the aesthetic stage to ethical stage and ultimately religious stage landing in the realm of “faith”; where an individual arrives at without any rational commitment. M. K. Gandhi, whose journey in life encompassed politics, economics, and social realms where the underlying paradigm has always been religion. He did not consider ‘truth’ and therefore ‘morality’ as segregated from religion. R. D. Ranade, while mentioning the criteria of mystical experience, very empathetically mentions that a mystic (a saint) has the element of universality, is intellectual, emotional, has the intuitive experience of ‘spiritual realization’ and cannot be devoid of morality. B. R. Ambedkar, instead of accepting Christianity or Islam, consecrated into Buddhism; that befitted Indian contextual situation critiquing the popular Brahmanism, believed that religion must be in amalgamation and consonance with reason and scientific temperament. And this criterion was fulfilled by Buddhism (indeed with other criteria).  His adopting Buddhism was more of a political movement rather than spiritual; therefore, his Buddhism in the transformed format, is called Neo-Buddhism. The research article concludes by comparing these masters’ views and ideologies in the context of ‘a possibility of ethical religion’ that has appealed my conscience.