Emmanuel Kant – Engaging Peace

by Stefan Schindler

William James, Mark Twain, I. F. Stone. Emma Goldman, Helen Keller, Molly Ivins. Jim Hightower, John Pilger, William Blum. Lewis Lapham, Michael Parenti, Victor Wallis. Vandana Shiva, Joan Baez, Naomi Klein. Ami Goodman, Abby Martin, Daniel Berrigan.

David Talbot, James Douglass, Thich Nhat Hanh. Oscar Romero, the Dalai Lama, Dan Ellsberg. And, of course, Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. These are just a few of the torch-bearers of the spirit of Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King and John Lennon.

Peace is possible. Progress has been made. Meanwhile, the struggle continues.

A crisis can be ongoing and deepening for a very long time. This has been the case with the USA for forty years at least. 1968 might well be seen as the pivot point. The full and fatal swerve toward economic apartheid and the rollback of FDR’s New Deal began in earnest in 1981 with Reaganomics. The hammer-blows against social enlightenment have kept the war machine in full throttle and kept too many Americans in thrall to sloganeering and sophistry.

The earth groans, bees disappear, and in 2020 the wasteland grows.

But danger is also opportunity. Breakdown is often breakthrough.

Behind the news there is a global dance. A collective invitation to give peace a chance.

What is true for the individual is true for the whole. Fate is determined by the choices we make. Let us use our freedom wisely. What Kant said at the end of the 18^th century is true now: “We live in an age of enlightenment; but we do not yet live in an enlightened age.”

Perhaps the essence of life really is learning and service. Siddhartha Gautama, Meister Eckhart and Thomas Merton thought so. I believe it too.

Keep the faith, my friend. We may yet be on the verge of something great. A turning of the civilizational wheel toward the wisdom of James and Twain and company. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.

Searching for Enlightenment by Kathie Malley-Morrison

By Stefan Schindler

In his 1784 essay on the nature of Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant declared: “Enlightenment is liberation from self-imposed immaturity.” He also noted that, if I may be so bold as to paraphrase, “We live in an age of enlightenment, but we do not yet live in an enlightened age.”

Kant’s observations ought to give us pause. They are worth pondering. They are as relevant today as they were in the late 18^th century. To reflect upon them with the seriousness they deserve, we might begin by noting that one hundred years later, another German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, said of the same Prussian country in which Kant wrote his revolutionary Critique of Pure Reason: “This nation has made itself stupid on purpose.”

Nietzsche’s observation applies to America today. So does the maxim by George Santayana: “Those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” Let us then pause a moment to reflect upon the possibility – indeed, the necessity – of what Richard Oxenberg calls “heart-centered rationality.”

Heart-centered rationality is a way of referring to The Golden Rule, revived by Martin Buber in the Kantian-based ethics of his book I and Thou. Kant and Buber argue for the innate dignity of every person; a dignity worthy of respect. In order, then, to put an end to what the post-Kantian philosopher Hegel called “the slaughter-bench of history,” we need an ethical, educational, and cultural revolution; one in which cooperation has primacy over competition, and which embraces what the Dalai Lama calls “a common religion of kindness.”

Accordingly, we must recognize that our collective survival now depends upon a global commitment to what might best be called The Enlightenment Project. This, of course, returns us to Kant’s definition of enlightenment, which I will elaborate on in my next post, with reference to other major figures in the history of philosophy and the pursuit social justice.

Meanwhile, we might begin by noting that during America’s wars on Puerto Rico and the Philippines, Mark Twain declared: “America’s flag should be a skull-and-crossbones.” And when Mahatma Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western civilization, he replied: “I think it would be a good idea.”

Co-founder of The National Registry for Conscientious Objection, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, a recipient of The Boston Baha’i Peace Award, and a Trustee of The Life Experience School and Peace Abbey Foundation, Dr. Stefan Schindler received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Boston College, worked one summer in a nature preserve, lived in a Zen temple for a year, did the pilot’s voice in a claymation video of St. Exupery’s The Little Prince, acted in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” and performed as a musical poet in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York City. He also wrote The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Awards for Howard Zinn and John Lennon. He is now semi-retired and living in Salem, Massachusetts. His books include The Tao of Socrates, America’s Indochina Holocaust, Discoursing with the Gods, and Space is Grace; his forthcoming book is Buddha’s Political Philosophy.