The intellectual achievements of George Berkeley, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Georg Hegel are widely celebrated, but it’s hard to see why. These four similar thinkers are generally considered some of the greatest philosophers ever; and yet their theories are so false and evil. Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and Hegel have damaged mankind immensely thru their remarkable irrationality, lack of common sense, and denial of obvious truths. The individual and society have suffered enormously.
George Berkeley is probably best known for his idea-ism or “Idealism”, the doctrine that only minds and their ideas are real. Berkeley’s assertion that material objects do not exist independently of perception defies the common-sense view that the physical world is real and existent, regardless of whether or not anyone is looking at it. This “out of sight, out of mind, out of existence” claim is a fundamentally irrational and senseless view which denies the seemingly obvious truth that physical things and material objects continue to exist even when not observed, whether by “god” or man. Berkeley’s bizarre claim undermines confidence in reason and the human mind. His attack on sensory experience and near-universal belief generates a form of Skepticism so extreme that both intellectuals and average men lose confidence in their ability to gain knowledge about basic reality. The damage this nonsense does to fundamental understanding, rational self-confidence, and the human spirit is incalculable.
David Hume, in turn, takes Skepticism to new heights with his radical questioning of causality. He claims our basic beliefs in cause and effect, the continual self, and even the external world are not grounded in reason and actual reality, but in mere habit and custom. One thing may happen after another, due to a seemingly direct and clear impact, yet Hume claims no conclusion can be drawn from this, no matter how carefully it’s observed, recorded, analyzed, and tested. Ultimately, Hume disbelieves in objective reality and truth; and even himself as a certain being. By denying a reasonable and scientific basis for these foundational concepts, Hume’s philosophy promotes fundamental irrationality and senselessness. His notion of causality casts serious and painful doubt that events in the world are connected in predictable and comprehensible ways. This dreadful Idealism and Skepticism leads to an intellectual paralysis and uncertainty in which the observation and study of the universe is seen as essentially hopeless, and any real search for truth, knowledge, and understanding is futile.
Immanuel Kant compounds Hume’s errors by positing a complex and baffling system of “transcendental” Idealism. This is even more irrational and nonsensical than the ideas of Berkeley and Hume. Kant argues that human observations and experiences are fatally shaped by the limited nature and inborn categories of their minds, such as space, time, and causality. While Kant claims his beliefs preserve the possibility of knowledge, in fact he argues humans can only know appearance and not reality. They can only know things as they seem but not “things-in-themselves”. This defies common experience and good sense. The idea that our understanding of the world is fatally and hopelessly mediated by the innate structures and inescapable flaws of the mind contradicts all of human history and virtually every individual’s experience of the universe and life. Kant’s separation of phenomena and “noumena” is without evidence or justification. Everyday perception and experience rejects his literally irrational and senseless ideas. Kant adds to his destructiveness and nonsensicality by claiming people shouldn’t be morally good in order to be great or happy, as everyone supposes. Rather they should be “good” without hope of reward, and thru a mindless and arbitrary adherence to self-sacrifice based on duty alone.
Georg Hegel “learns” from the three previous thinkers, and is arguably the worst of them all. He complicates and damages the philosophical landscape with perhaps the most convoluted and extreme Idealism and Skepticism of all. He looks at the universe and then claims subjects and objects are the same, or else form a single inseparable unit. No real evidence is offered for this claim, and like Berkeley, Hume, and Kant before him, it’s hard to see how such “knowledge” and “truth” is relevant to philosophy or benefits mankind in any manner whatever. Certainly Hegel’s notion of the “absolute” is a highly abstract and elusive concept that seems to lack practical relevance, purpose, and benefit for men.
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People seek to understand their universe and themselves, accomplish great things with their short lifespans, and experience pleasure and happiness at the highest levels possible. And people turn to philosophers for help in this. But it’s hard to see how the irrational, senseless, incomprehensible, tortured, schizophrenic, irrelevant, worthless, dispiriting, depressing claims of Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and Hegel achieve any of this.
In the end, the philosophies of George Berkeley, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Georg Hegel – such as they are – aren’t just pointless and useless, but positively damaging to mankind’s job and hope of obtaining knowledge about material and moral reality. They shake confidence in the universe and reality, reason and mind, knowledge and truth, and life and self. These “philosophies” confuse, perplex, disorientate, and alienate. Actual truth, genuine knowledge, common sense, and practical information and education perish under their freakish and malign influence.
It’s clear that the influence of these pseudo-philosophers extends well beyond obscure think-tanks and academia. Their ideas have shaped countless aspects of culture, politics, and society. The damage they do to Western Civilization, sound thinking, truth, moral goodness, and real life is immense. Metaphysical bafflement, epistemological agnosticism, cultural relativism, and fundamental amoralism are the result. People become apathetic about their sacred existence as they lose intellectual hold of their formerly competent minds and good sense. Such philosophical victims ignore, and end up repudiating, the differences between truth and falsity, good and evil, civilization and savagery, joy and agony. Postmodernism, Wokism, ignorance, depravity, and misery are the result.
In summation, the philosophies of Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and Hegel promote irrationality, are oblivious to practical reality, lack common sense, and deny obvious truths. Their worthlessly complex, esoteric, and abstract ideas alienate people from reality and intellectual truth while creating anxiety, confusion, disorientation, and despair in the real world. By denying the clarity of existence, the trustworthiness of sensory experience, the rational basis for fundamental concepts, the possibility of direct knowledge of the world, and the reality and objectivity of truth, these “philosophers” undermine, suborn, and defeat the natural and necessary human acquisition of knowledge and understanding of reality, leading to intellectual, cultural, and moral ambiguity, relativism, devastation, and oblivion.
