Lewis White Beck Quotes on Knowledge
Lewis White Beck (1913–1997), the leading mid-twentieth-century American Kant scholar, gave Anglophone Kantian studies one of its most rigorous treatments of the Critique of Practical Reason in his 1960 Commentary, and the long sequence of essays collected as Studies in the Philosophy of Kant (1965) systematically engaged the entire critical corpus. The framework grounds Kant's theoretical and practical epistemologies in the single transcendental analysis of the conditions of possibility of objective experience and rational action, and Beck's parallel work as translator and editor of the principal practical writings shaped the Anglophone curriculum of Kant studies for two subsequent generations.
Quotes
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Attributed to Lewis White Beck:
“Kant's critique of pure reason is the critique of metaphysics, not its dismissal.”
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“Whatever plausibility the machine theory has- and it has much plausibility and is a rich model for psychology and neurology- it gains by being associated with a self-exemption clause.”
Lewis White Beck , The Actor and the Spectator - book reviewed by Mary Midgley in The Philosophical Quarterly", Vol. 27, Issue 107, April 1977 p. 185-186 (1975) , p. 25 -
“If you believe that you are not a machine , but that I am (then) I do not know why you are reading this book".”
Lewis White Beck , The Actor and the Spectator - book reviewed by Mary Midgley in The Philosophical Quarterly", Vol. 27, Issue 107, April 1977 p. 185-186 (1975) , p. 29 -
“But somewhat like people who object to spending money needed in the ghettoes on exploring the moon, I think the best hope for our survival is to be based on understanding human predicaments here on earth, not expecting a saving message from super-human beings in the sky...Thinking about and even hoping to find extraterrestrial civilizations, however, sharpen our search for and appreciation of the peculiar virtues and vices of the only form of life we know.”
Lewis White Beck , "Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life" in Extraterrestrials Science and Alien Intelligence ( Regis Jr., Edward. Ed., 1985) , Part V, p. 14