Emmanuel Kant and the Metaphysics of the Internet

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

15 and 16 March 2002

« LITERATURE AND THE INTERNET: NEW FORMS OF ELECTRONIC WRITING »

http://www.ercla.paris4.sorbonne.fr/en/litternet.htm

- opening music: Mozart! (There is no music, but the silence followed for a beat)

The conception of freedom is a conception of pure reason, writes Emmanuel Kant in his Metaphysics of Morals.

• Don't believe anything without thorough examination.
• Don't obey any authority, however important it claims to be.
• Look at everything through your own eyes and examine it thoroughly.

These were Emmanuel Kant's permanent Maxims as reported by his contemporary Borowsky.

This intuitive rambling lecture deals with the life of Emmanuel Kant, eminent XVIII century humanist philosopher from Königsberg whose metaphysical research (Forschung) is the founding stone of modern thought, bringing European culture out of the closet of the Dark Ages into the Age of Enlightenment - Aufklärung, and I will attempt some examples of his Metaphysics applied to the Internet.

What does it have to do with the Internet, you ask?

Well that's what we're here for. I won't be talking about how to make a buck on the Internet... We're concerned with content, with writing, with knowledge, with ideas. Because the Internet is today's revolutionary tool for disseminating knowledge, it is a powerful tool to apply Metaphysics.

Emmanuel Kant's Metaphysics were an intellectual revolution of knowledge whose dissemination and popularization was made possible by Gutenberg's invention of the printing press.

The Internet, grandchild of ARPANET created by Paul Barret, Larry Roberts, etc, in the 1960s, lead to a revolutionary dissemination of knowledge today - allowing an infinite amount of people to exchange knowledge and awareness electronically outside of time and space - time and space being another concept of Kant I will mention later.

Let me first give you a brief synopsis of Kant's life and a perspective of his autonomous thinking liberating himself from religious dogmas and constraints by gaining knowledge of

• Sein
• Erblickbarkeit
• das Numinose und so weiter...

... resulting in a scenario of general metaphysics, ontology (the essence) and deontology (our duty) that still very much concern us.

Kant's Metaphysics put the individual at the core of knowledge and put God, like an embryo in a jar of formaldehyde. But someone had to replace the void of His "responsibility", and this is where Kant came in with his philosophical and spiritual architecture.

Metaphysics, according to Steven Palmquist's definition, is the highest form of philosophy, which attempts to gain knowledge of ideas. It is the quest for the ultimate truth.

The essence of metaphysics are, as expressed in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, the eternal questions:

• What can I do?
• What should I do?
• What may I hope for? - The results of our dreams, expectations, our essential goals.

This leads us to the question:

• Who are we?