Kant wants you to stop doing metaphysics and mow his goddamn lawn

edited 2012-03-24 20:53:00 in General
Though it may not, then, be very difficult to leave to posterity the bequest of a systematic metaphysic, constructed in conformity with a critique of pure reason, yet such a gift is not to be valued lightly. For not only will reason be enabled to follow the secure path of a science, instead of, as hitherto, groping at random, without circumspection or self-criticism; our enquiring youth will also be in a position to spend their time more profitably than in the ordinary dogmatism by which they are so early and so greatly encouraged to indulge in easy speculation about things of which they understand nothing, and into which neither they nor anyone else will ever have any insight - encouraged, indeed, to invent new ideas and opinions, while neglecting the study of the better-established sciences. 

I like to imagine there was a plague of irresponsible young German metaphysicians in Kant's time.
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