Zack Beauchamp

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

15. This shows the extraordinary ability for the alternative right-wing information system to generate its own politically convenient truths. Even on something as seemingly abstract as Kant's metaphysics, there's a way to twist reality to own the libs. — PolitiTweet.org

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

14. This guy Guelzo who Thiessen describes as a Princeton professor — amusingly, he's not a professor and in fact a Civil War scholar by trade — seems to have somehow imbibed the cartoonish Ayn Rand interpretation of Kant and connected it to critical race theory. — PolitiTweet.org

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

13. So why does it matter that Thiessen butchered it so badly? In part, because it's a well-deserved embarrassment for one of America's worst columnists. But I think it's a little more revealing than that. — PolitiTweet.org

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

12. None of what I'm saying here is especially controversial among Kant scholars. It's basic, basic stuff — just the fundamental building blocks of one of the most complex and influential philosophical systems ever devised — PolitiTweet.org

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

11. Kant didn't believe reason was "inadequate" — he believed it was the foundation of morality and, in fact, all of our knowledge about the world! He was clear-eyed about some limits to human capacities for reason but spent his life trying to vindicate them — PolitiTweet.org

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

10. This brings us back to @marcthiessen's terrible column. With all of that Kant exposition in mind, you can see how utterly absurd these series of claims are https://t.co/Mnh7yvdsMd — PolitiTweet.org

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

9. Again, the arguments for this position are too complicated to summarize on Twitter. So I will again screenshot the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, an invaluable resource, but it's still not nearly detailed enough. Read Kant's "Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals" https://t.co/lTvTmMtHyK — PolitiTweet.org

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

8. Indeed, Kant considered to be morality to be an a priori truth ("synthetic" a priori specifically). In his view, morality is a necessary feature of our capacity to reason at all — and, conversely, that our capacity to reason is why we deserve moral consideration. — PolitiTweet.org

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

7. In historical context, Kant felt his project was necessary to coherentize Enlightenment science and reason with religion and moral systems https://t.co/wVPzodBQjH https://t.co/QlzUKqpToZ — PolitiTweet.org

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

6. The mechanics of the transcendental deduction are exceptionally complicated and not necessary to get into now. What matters is that Kant is trying to develop a grounding for objective truth — to create the epistemological and metaphysical foundations necessary to believe in it — PolitiTweet.org

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

5. He does this through an argument famously termed the "transcendental deduction." In Kant's view, there are certain truths that are necessary for us to have experiences at all — a priori truths that precede and structure our experience of reality. — PolitiTweet.org

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

4. A fundamental aim of the Critique is to *vindicate* reason against the limits of of our perceptual capabilities. Kant argues for a category of truths, called "a priori" truths, that we can know to be true without reference to our experiences of the outside world — PolitiTweet.org

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

3. Somehow, American conservatives have gotten it in their heads that this means that Kant is a skeptic about reality and reason. I believe the source of this is Ayn Rand, but it's complete hogwash. — PolitiTweet.org

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

2. In "The Critique of Pure Reason," Kant argues that humans are not capable of perceiving the reality of the external world — that we only can only interact with the world we perceive, which is not (given our limits) the world as it necessarily is — PolitiTweet.org

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

1. In light of this Washington Post mess, it occurs to me it might make sense to briefly explain what Kant's view of reason actually was — and why it matters that the American right is butchering it so badly — PolitiTweet.org

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

@Dan_E_Solo in the cartoonist's defense, i did grow a gigantic marx-shaped beard freshman year but it had nothing to do with politics — PolitiTweet.org

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

I am begging you to stop tweeting about philosophy until you a) can spell "Aristotelianism" correctly and b) read a single book — PolitiTweet.org

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

This is a fun game. Since Heidegger was deeply influenced by the pre-Socratics, it follows that Heraclitus is the reason we have Nazism — PolitiTweet.org

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

Good news everyone, intellectual history is reducible to a game of Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Turns out Aristotle is the father of Critical Race Theory https://t.co/bXmZ7YU0VI — PolitiTweet.org

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

Tell me you don't understand Kant's metaphysics and epistemology without telling me you don't understand Kant's metaphysics and epistemology https://t.co/BU8AkYwHeI — PolitiTweet.org

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

@JeffreyASachs It’s a Taylor Swift joke — PolitiTweet.org

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

@dmarusic https://t.co/67dac46jbb — PolitiTweet.org

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

Anyway it's nice that the years I spent agonizing over metaethics and doing regular close reads of The Sources of Normativity have finally become useful in my day job — PolitiTweet.org

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

@hilzoy omg how — PolitiTweet.org

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

@NatalieBrender @qjurecic @marcthiessen Of course, I've read the stuff here. But the nuances don't negate the essential point about the importance of reason in his thought, or the cartoonish mischaracterization in Thiessen's column. — PolitiTweet.org

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

@billyez2 https://t.co/ARmBUciPR7 — PolitiTweet.org

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

@sckimbriel Hard not to cackle at this shit, right? — PolitiTweet.org

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

"What is Enlightenment?" Immanuel Kant, 1784 https://t.co/DffC0y65NG — PolitiTweet.org

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

There is probably no single philosopher more associated with the celebration of reason and rationality than Kant, especially in his moral theory. This is *humiliating* for @marcthiessen, who has basically admitted in print he doesn't know the first thing about Western philosophy. — PolitiTweet.org

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

Like yes, it's by Marc Thiessen who has been more wrong about more consequential things — like torture — but it really raises the question of what kind of minimum standards you need for columnists — PolitiTweet.org