My first lecture has drawn more than 10,000 views. My second has drawn more than 7000. The third has thus far drawn 1300. A few more weeks and we will be down to the sixty or seventy people actually interested in the Critique. That will still be three times as many people as ever took my course on the book at one time, so it is not so bad. But I must give up my dreams of going on the road with Beyonce.
Monday I tackle the opening sections of the Transcendental Analytic, up to but most definitely not including the Deduction in A. That is for the following week. For Monday's lecture, I have had Staples create two large 2 foot by 3 foot poster boards, one with the Table of Functions of Judgment on it in great big letters and the other with the Table of Categories. I have also bought an adjustable easel to display them. Expensive, but I figure it is tax deductible [as presumably was the $10,000 Trump paid out of his charitable foundation for a portrait of himself to display in one of his hotels.]
I shall open my lecture by replying to a question posed, after my second lecture, on this blog, thus fusing these two very different forms of self-expression. I imagine Plato did the same thing, incorporating into a later Dialogue a response to an objection raised in the Groves of Academe by his favorite pupil, Aristotle. [This is a bit of wry self-deprecatory humor, for those with tin ears.]
A strange peace has descended on me now that I have not heard Chris Matthews' braying voice for nigh on a week. I think after the election, if all turns out as I hope, I shall never go back to my former obsession with political commentary.
Don't judge by initial numbers. This is not a subject that is likely to go viral. But overtime, the numbers will continue to grow, especially as word gets around.
ReplyDeleteMoreover, digital consumption of information is increasing exponentially as digital natives replace analog generations.
It's a significant contribution to Kant studies. Kudos.
Only three lectures in and I'm already two behind. Pesky day job.
ReplyDeleteYou have to set priorities. :)
ReplyDelete"I think after the election, if all turns out as I hope, I shall never go back to my former obsession with political commentary."
ReplyDeleteUh-huhn. Good luck with that.
Is Kant's way of explaining the appearance/reality distinction one of the things in the Critique that you would want to defend?
ReplyDeleteAt the beginning of the Transcendental Aesthetic, when Kant says: “Diese [die Anschauung] findet aber nur statt, sofern uns der Gegenstand gegeben wird; dieses aber ist wiederum, uns Menschen wenigstens, nur dadurch möglich, dass er das Gemüt auf gewisse Weise affiziert” he seems to be attributing a causal relationship (“affizieren”) between objects in themselves and the mind, since „Gegenstand“ here is not the object as it appears to us (the “affecting” occurs prior to mental activity and gets the ball rolling). Is this talk of “affecting” merely the ladder that Kant will soon toss aside à la Wittgenstein, maybe hauling it out again for his ethical theory? (I think I may be raising what Sidney Morgenbesser would have called a "Philosophy 1 question"), but so be it.
ReplyDelete