Frequent readers, both of you, know that this place pitterpatters on little feet between the beautiful and the sublime. (one free turtle on this blogsite for anybody that gets that reference) In the wider world almost everybody mocks Kant. As a young man riding the trains between DC and URI, I read his book and what I remember was written on the inside front cover of a book thousands of miles away and a decade behind me.
He talked to me about stereotypes and you know all that crap that we were lectured to about how one should not stereotype the truth was pretty simple and any idiot can figure the truth out. Stereotypes are a guide and warning and serve just those two purposes. You wait until you begin to know before you simply tell yourself that those black guys walking behind you late at night on a city street that doesn't really have a lot of foot traffic are friendly. By stereotype, they aren't and that's because they almost never have been. People know that. The race baiting ministers of the left are famous for saying that they would cross the street to avoid their own kind in that kind of situation.
Kant lived in the imperial age and what he wrote about was the French, the Germans, the English from back when those words were racial and could be safely addressed with a pen. They're all pretty meaningless now. You might call them africans or jihadists now.
I mourn the passing of the old world. It had it's moments, but I won't go back again.
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