(I, Kant)

It's a little bit funny.

I've been hitting Frederick Copleston's A History of Philosophy every day for the past 283 days, have read more than half of its 5,344 pages, and was pretty excited about encountering Mr. Immanuel Kant (despite reports that he was "a real pissant who was very rarely stable"). But now that I've been reading about him for more than a few days (he gets a pretty big chunk of Volume VI), I have to admit that I am less than thrilled. Maybe I'm just not smart enough to wrap my mind around this stuff...but it seems to me that this is the most turgid and least interesting material I've encountered in the past 3,000 pages and 9+ months. There are times when I think, "Surely you've missed a step there, because that is NOT an inescapable conclusion you've just drawn." And there are times when I think, "Well, you just fuckin' SAID that." But it's probably me.

At any rate, I continue to plow ahead. And today I encountered an idea which actually interested me. I will admit that I'm not completely sure that this is what Kant was saying...or, more properly, what Copleston said Kant was saying...but I've done my best to untie the Gordian knot, and this is the best I can do with it. And if I'm wrong, and it's not what etc., then what the hell, it's still an interesting thought.

That thought being: you can either pursue happiness or virtue, but not both.

Which does not mean that pursuing virtue cannot lead to happiness...though I think the implication there was that the happiness was most likely to arrive in The Next World...or that the pursuit of happiness could not be virtuous...though I'm picturing a camel and the eye of a needle on that one....

But that is an interesting, isn't it? Do you want happiness or do you want to live virtuously?

And I immediately had to look at my life and conclude that I have often chosen "virtue" over happiness. And the pursuit of that virtue has, indeed, contributed to my unhappiness in some quite vivid ways. Many of them having to do with splendid women I had the opportunity to have sexual congress with, but did not because I was attempting to Do The Right Thing.

It is not uncommon for me to berate myself over this.

But you know...I think I would probably make the same choices if I had the opportunity to go back and do it all over again. It has to do with not putting my desires above the good of someone else. Which is pretty much the definition of Virtue, isn't it? 

Damn.

"Hey, you want to have sex?"

"I can't."

"Fuckin' loser."

"Sigh."