We can't with Kant

Immanuel Kant seems to have written one of the most frustrating things I’ve ever had to read. Between his overuse of “viz” “Hence” and, my personal favorite, “a priori” I didn’t know if I was going to get through this reading without rolling my eyes multiple times (I didn’t). He seems like one of those guys who knows everything about everything and won’t take your sass, because he knows better.

            Anyway, that being said, I would like to talk about his idea of truth and what is true and how it relates to, what else, politics. Now, I’m no big fan of politics, which is why I was drawn to this concept. I accept that politics are a thing, and that’s great for people who like to talk a lot, but for me, they just seem to create a greater divide between people.

            Getting back on track, Kant describes truth as “an island…enclosed by nature itself within unchangeable bounds. It is…surrounded by a vast and stormy ocean, where illusion properly resides and many fog banks and much fast-melting ice feign new-found lands” (303). Despite my dislike of Kant, I do like this description. Truth, as we know it, or rather as we wish we knew it, is an island all by itself, almost unreachable because we can’t see it through the fog and fake truth islands that surround it. I like to think of this as politics. Why? Good question. We all want (or should want) the ultimate truth from politicians: Tell me what you’re going to do, why it’s better, and what the country is going to look like afterward. That’s it. Straightforward and clean. But, instead, we get long winded explanations, attacks to the other guy, and questions that are supposed to answer questions, but, let’s face it, that tactic is never cute.

            So, Truth Island is hanging out in the middle of a dense fog, which are false promises and lies that politicians speak. Both sides are guilty of this. Democrats and Republicans both do this because they can get away with it. I wonder what that says about us as a country that we allow people to continuously lie to us, and, like a bad boyfriend we let back into the house, we convince ourselves that “this time it will be different.” Wrong again. Bam! Another iceberg we thought was Truth Island.

            Back to Kant. He says that “having someone set forth to us what is true does not seem to us enough; rather, we want him to set forth what we desire to know” (304). I was having a lot of trouble understanding this at first, but I believe he’s talking about how the truth and what we desire to know are two different things. Think about political ads. Most of the time, the candidate featured in the ad spends their time bashing the person they’re running against, and I think in a twisted way, that’s what we want to hear. We want to hear the digs and the truth that our particular choice creates, but is it the truth? Would someone who never supplied their own view of truth, but rather was legitimately honest with people ever win an election? If we are to believe Kant, the answer is no because that isn’t enough for us, that’s not what we want. According to Kant, we can’t. We can’t accept truth, we need our own illusion of it, our own fake Truth Island.