Kant's Moral Philosophy | w/Dr. Chris Firestone - PPP ep. 91

Well, welcome back to another episode of Parker's Pensees. This is a podcast where we explore thoughts and philosophy, theology, nature, and life. I love thinking about cool stuff, so come think with me. Just wanted to give a little plug for the Patreon. I just updated it with a bunch of Parker's Pensees mugs and stickers and shirts. So, if you like this podcast at all and you want to support me, please do that. And now you have all sorts of free goodies that come along with different levels of support. And also, if you join for $5 a month or higher, then you will get these episodes quicker. So, I release two to three a week.

But I have a nice backlog often times, so you can see those at your leisure. But today we're going to be talking about Immanuel Kant and we're going to be talking about Kant's morality. We're going to be getting to probably a lot of different facets of Kant's morality, but I have with me again Dr. Chris Firestone. He is a Kant scholar and he's a philosopher here at the undergrad Trinity International University and one of my favorite philosophers to talk with because we can go all over the place. So, without further ado, Dr. Firestone, thanks so much for coming back on the podcast. All right. One sec. Sorry there. You were un- Oh, can you unmute yourself there, Dr. Firestone? Here we go.

How does that work? Yeah, that's much better. All right. This is Parker, thanks for having me back. I appreciate it. Yeah, we had so much fun on the first one and a lot of a lot of the listeners really liked hearing from you. So, I thought this one would be really fun because I don't know a ton about Kant's moral arguments and stuff, but I've heard recently I've heard people talking about his argument. And so, just wanted to pick your brain on that. And it it seems like from from just our email correspondence that he's got several arguments from morality. Is that right? Yeah, you know, it depends how how much resolution you want to have.

You know, if you dig deep into say the groundwork of the metaphysics of morals, you have an argument, you might say, for the existence of God and immortality. But if you if you if you step back and look at the full employment of his philosophy and all the what you might call operations of reason, then you have another argument. And and everywhere everywhere in Kant's philosophy, there is this press to understand the meaningfulness of life and the significance of God and immortality and rational religious belief, um, that is sort of funding this whole enterprise. So, there's two there's a variety of angles one can look at.

And you know, you got to remember, I think, when you're dealing with Kant, you're not dealing with your classic, say, analytic philosopher who's going to give you a syllogistic argument, step A, step B, step C. He thinks it's it's never quite that easy because reason is perspectival. We come at it with various capabilities, faculties of the mind that are operative in in human reason. Yeah. And so, that's that makes him a little bit different, you might say, than the your standard fare in analytic philosophy today. Yeah, that's that's really helpful to that's a really helpful caveat. I think of it um, kind of like the the one in the many problem.

There's like the the the moral argument and you can kind of abstract out and kind of look at here's here's basically what he's saying, but then in as you look at it in context, it's going to take on different varieties, different forms based on the subject matter that he's covering. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things you figure out very quickly with Kant is that he thinks it's kind of he has an affinity with common sense realism in this sense that he thinks we have moral experiences, that everybody kind of knows the difference between right and wrong. They they it happens in everyday life. We teach it to our children. We we see it in the in the public sphere.

We know the difference. We know when someone's transcending or going around and circumventing what should be the right thing to do. But trying to sort of figure out how one makes the determination of of what constitutes the good, that's where Kant gets I think really rather interesting. But you can always circumvent Kant if indeed you say don't believe there's a difference between good and evil. Uh if you if you don't have those common sensibilities, then you know, the moral argument only has so much persuasive power. You have to actually start with recognizing that there is such a distinction. Yeah. Oh, that's that's another great point.

For Kant, um that capacity, is that something that we have to posit as like a first principle or um is that on the same level as the the categories of of thought? Is it something a priori that that we have? Yeah, this is this is the There's certain things about Kant's philosophy that's philosophers themselves will either take issue with or just say I totally agree with him. And that is that there's something that testifying to us in in terms of our experiences. You know, just like we experience the immediate environment around us, that testifies to us that you know, that that there's a certain sort of inherent ability that human beings have to experience the world.

Um when we see things go wrong, we say that was that was evil. Um that's a common sensibility we all have. You think he has the same thing with beauty. And to a certain degree, he has it with religious experience. There's a hotly debated uh field in Kant studies with whether or not he has a kind of burgeoning religious experience uh in his uh you know, philosophical system. But all of these things fall into that category of things that would if if indeed we have these experiences and Kant thinks that we do, Mhm. then what are the conditions within the human person that make those experiences possible? Yeah.

And uh you know, if if you dismiss them all, you know, outright, then of course this is not going to be convincing to you. Mhm. But if you think Kant is actually onto something that is significant, um that matters to human flourishing and so forth, then he becomes a very serious uh philosophical uh voice and somebody who you have to contend with. Yeah. Okay, then it seems like that fits perfectly with his transcendental deductions that yeah, you start with this, you start with this experience of moral reasoning, uh practical reasoning, and you say, "What are the conditions that that give rise to this? What must be true given that we have these?"

And so if you want to deny that first principle kind of uh intuition or uh what whatever part of human experience you're calling that, then yeah, you deny that, so maybe you need a different argument, maybe you go to C. S. Lewis, maybe you do do some kind of other moral argument to to show them that there is a morality out there and you do know it. Yeah. That's right, you know, I he sets up this problematic in the first critique, right? Because he is asking a particular question. What are the necessary conditions for the possibility of immediate sense perception? Yeah. And when he raises that question, he he discovers the you know, you know, certain conditions, transcendental conditions.

This is sometimes thought to be the revolutionary part of Kant, and that's the Kant that develops this Copernican insight, but I have uh I have as I've grown to appreciate his philosophy more and more, I don't think that's the revolutionary part. Uh it it it provides him with a kind of methodology. But the revolutionary part for Kant, I think, is that reason has certain employments that it naturally goes to. So, when it when it raises a question, "What ought I to do?" That is very different than the facts on the ground. The facts on the ground don't interpret themselves. Right. I can't take a snapshot of you know, a particular environment and say, "Well, that guy ought to do that."

You know, you you really can't do that. Uh, you need to make the transition, says Kant, to a different perspective. And then, for him, that's the practical question, "What ought I to do?" And it demands that we ask the transcendental question of reason, "What are the conditions within reason that project an ought to us?" Um, now, the conditions on the ground matter. I think utilitarians have successfully shown us that, right? That it it it it does matter, the consequences matter, and so forth. But they only matter not as first principles, right? They matter only because they they have real consequences. Right. That when you're trying to determine the difference between right and wrong, that isn't exactly something that you can scientifically determine.

You have to actually ask yourself, "What are the conditions that make a right or wrong possible?" And so, Kant says you can't find that in immediate experience. You have to actually look at the disposition. What is it that reason brings to bear dispositionally that makes a distinction between good and evil possible? Mhm. And um, that's a that's a first principle, like you were saying, type question. It's not an employed question. I'm not looking at my conditions right now and trying to decide in the heat of the moment what I ought to do. Well, you've already I think this resonates with the with the Bible teaching us as well, right?

If you got yourself into that position and it's a tough moral call for you, you've already made the mistake. You've already created the conditions where either doing the right thing or doing the wrong thing are in fact the natural outcomes. So, what Kant's looking for are those preconditions which in within reason that would would would make a make a right and wrong even something we can talk about. And so, and that's a different employment of reason. And this is the what I'm going to call the perspectival revolution of Kant. Don't look at nature to figure out your morals. Look inward. Look at yourself. Look at what reason brings to bear as a template for understanding the difference between good and evil. Yeah.

Yeah, that is pretty huge. So, that's something that the the modern listeners who are familiar with Jordan Peterson all will know that he he kind of bifurcates the world into two perspectives. The world as a place of things, and that's what science tells us about. And then the world is a forum for action. And that seems to that seems to be right in line with the the moral uh reasoning, the practical reasoning that that Kant's getting at. The forum for action. The world is a is a forum for action. Yeah, when when you look when you look at the things of the world through immediate sense perception, A, they don't interpret themselves. And B, they're often times warring against what you take to be right.

Um you know, the conditions we put ourselves in rightly or wrongly put us in tough positions sometimes. And and nature isn't really necessarily on our side all the time. Uh and so, looking there for your moral precepts is bound to lead to confusion, vigilante type behavior because we're mixing principles like we're usurping the moral moral law with justice or at least our own conception of justice. And uh for Kant, that is not justice isn't a first principle. It comes it emerges out of an obedience to the moral law first and foremost. And now once you know, once you figure out the difference between right and wrong and justice actually blossoms and becomes a principle that is worth considering in its own right. Mhm.

Um and so, you know, I I do think that a consequentialist ethics and various other forms of ethics that we see uh you know, I teach an ethics course we look at a variety of different ethical systems but ones that put the cart before the horse you might say are ones that typically want to deal with outcomes or they want to deal with justice or they want to deal with anything other than the moral law. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and that puts that puts human beings in the position of being God-like. Yeah. Um rather than listening to that voice within us which what we might call conscience, the Holy Spirit which would teach us, you know, okay let's first look at ourselves.

What what have we contributed to this situation? How do we pull up our own moral bootstraps and begin to think about doing the right thing? And get our own house in order as Jordan Peterson might want to put it. You know, if you can't get your own house in order, how are you going to be teaching other people about justice? I mean you you you're making it up as you go. You you're you're good with words, you're a sophist. You're good with words, you're good with manipulating ideas but you're not grounded in the good. Yeah. And that's a problem. That's a problem we're facing more and more in our culture as many of your listeners will will be familiar with. Yeah.

So, I I want to get into uh Kant's the reception of Kant's deontology because I'm sure that as I've learned from you, the reception of Kant is usually not well, maybe not usually but we receive people differently than what their original work say. And I wonder, you know, what would what what Kant would say. I I I I'm I'm I'm not sure if we should get into it now or not, but let me just um from what I've heard, how I've received Kant how I've been taught Kant is his view of deontology is that um you are more praiseworthy for doing something right if you don't enjoy it because that's what you know, that's what duty is and and to do something that you don't want to do is more uh commendable because you didn't want to do it.

It didn't you didn't didn't derive pleasure out of it and I don't know if if that's true to Kant, if that's what he's really saying or not, but when it comes to maybe maybe we could talk about it later or if you want to jump in right now Kant and the moral law and looking within it seems like if that's if that's part of our nature, shouldn't we enjoy that? Shouldn't we want to do that? We're filling out our telos? Right. No, that's um that's an off that's a very common misreading of what Kant's up to. Okay.

You know, when you when he you when we're talking about this thing called the moral law it really is a law generating uh it's a principle generating system. That is every time we act, it presupposes a principle on which we're acting. Right. Um you know, so if I'm going to if I find a uh you know, a bicycle out in the park and I decide to take it home I'm acting on a general principle that when I find property that's not mine, I and no one's there to to to to you know to see me or to stop me, I'll just take it as my own. Now, can that such a principle be made a universal law for all rational agents?

And Kant's putting down his his money on the fact that that cannot be universalized and make the world a kind of harmonious place that rational agents thrive in. Um and I think your listeners, depending what types of communities they come from, understand this. Yeah. That is the kinds of communities which don't do that thing tend to be the ones we try to get our homes in. And the kind of communities that do do those things are the ones we're running from. You know, and so I mean this is a general principle that Kant wants to see it's a law it's a it's a principle generating concept. Can Can the Can the principles on which you're about to act be made universal for all rational agents?

So that's a that's one general thing. Now that does sound dry, right? That sounds like man that's no fun. I mean really? You know, nobody that $20 bill laying there I mean Kant's going to stop me from having fun with that? Come on man. I get that. But what they don't understand is that this is set within an entire anthropology. And the anthropology basically is this that human beings have certain desires, right? That make us sentient beings. We share with the rest of the animal kingdom what he calls predisposition to animality. That is we have a predisposition for shelter, for procreation, for uh food, for the basic necessities of life and for the continuance of life. Yeah.

And that's something we share with every other known species. Um then he says we have a predisposition to um humanity that we share with other human beings certain traits. So you know, I'm a professor. I like to wear these sport coats. You know, cuz I like to be like other professors. And we share these desires. And when we see other people who have things, we want to have those things. And we want them because we both desire them and because we want to fit in with the rest of human beings humanity. But those are not what you might say guiding principles. They they don't align themselves. They kind of are haphazard. Nature presents us with them. We act on them, we don't act on them.

They don't put any order to themselves. Yeah. They present themselves as mere facts really. The facts of human nature you might say. And we share that same predisposition to humanity with let's say a tiger or a bear, a predisposition to tigerness means tigers want to behave like other tigers. That doesn't and when they when you go into their cages and they eat you alive, you don't blame the tiger. He's just doing what tigers do. Uh should have gone in the cage, frankly. Uh etc. Now, what is the ordering principle? What what makes an ought? We feel like we ought to be doing something, not just following the winds of nature or things that happened to fall in front of us.

You know, what like a $20 bill laying on the ground, I'd snatch that. That's what any Well, that's what any human without an ordering principle will do. Uh Kant says, "Ordering all of these things should be the moral law." And that doesn't take away the beauty, profundity of fulfilling your desires. It puts them in their proper place. It leads to things like temperance. It leads to things like virtue. It leads to things like a disposition of somebody who you want to lead your nation. Yeah. You want to lead your family.

Uh not somebody who is prone to the winds of nature and all of these desires as they haphazardly come up to us and they just do whatever happens to be in the moment, but an ordered disposition. And that ordering principle is the moral law, says Kant. And when it when it is ordering your other desires, you know, this is kind of what we find in scriptures well, right? Where Jesus says, "You know, you know, trust me. Order your life on me. I'm not taking away your desires. I'm fulfilling them." Now, you can do them without the conscience uh warring against you, right?

You know, that's why we have things like marriage and so forth as a commitment to uh to uh to uh to another person who then uh together you you uh you uh you pursue your desires in an orderly way uh with with with uh the moral law as your highest incentive. You know, and so that's that's a basic sketch of this sort of you might think of it like a pyramid. You remove the top, the rest of it sort of crumbles into a ruin as it were cuz it's pushed around by nature and the contingent events of life. Yeah.

Well, that that's really helpful and I think it's always helpful to to remember that this is a He He isn't an analytic uh philosopher, but he is a systematic thinker and he's got He's working through this thing, so you need to look at him as a whole. What What would he say like so a dog um sniffs a dog another dog's butt and loves it and just goes wild. And it's he's acting like a dog. He's He's acting out his nature. So, we have kind of these these two natures at work. We We are animals, but we are rational animals as as Aristotle says.

Um so, when we do when we are acting like an animal, we love it and and Christians will say that you know, that's acting out of your flesh, it's acting out of your sinful desires. And you you reflect on that with your reason and you say, "Dude, what was I doing?" right? And you have this war. But, when I'm when I'm living in the in the rational uh perspective or when I'm when I'm acting out of that human higher, you know, imago Dei nature, does Kant think I should enjoy that? Or um or what do we do with with the the deontology there?

Yeah, well, this is this this basically connect two points that we've already made and that is that you know the difference between right and wrong. Mhm. And when you're in the right, you're free indeed. Right? You You're able to pursue your desires. See, the the moral law ought to be your highest desire. Yeah. Things Kant as a rational agent. That is you want to be what you were meant to be and the moral law is what aligns and orders all your other desires so that you can be truly human. Yeah. And be fully human.

But when you go retrograde, let's say down to just human humanity itself and no more law, no guiding principle, you're one step away things Kant from disorder and turning to your animal nature and it's like an accordion, they're right? You begins to crush in on itself as a contingent of events in life. It has no There's nothing pushing against you might say nature. Okay. And nothing pushing against the the heat of the moment as it were. And you're prone to de facto things Kant, some other incentive becomes the guiding incentive. So, it might be your desire to be famous. Cuz you like to be like other human beings, right? And that desire becomes a guiding principle usurping the authority of the moral law.

And it leads to all sorts of disordered and amoral activities. Yeah. Uh if it's the guiding principle of uh of of your desires. Right? Anything that gets in the way now becomes a means to an end rather than an end in itself. And uh Are are those are Are those non-rational? So, like it seems to me like Kant would say that if if you're following reason as your guiding principle um it it'll lead you to the right answer. There there's one answer that's that's rational. Would he say that you're letting like your desires you're elevating a desire to the to the pinnacle and that's leading the rest of your desires? A desire to be famous is is not rational maybe or Yeah.

Well, he makes this distinction in in in his moral writings between what he calls hypothetical imperatives and categorical imperatives. Mhm. And a hypothetical imperative is whenever you put as an end some end. Mhm. And we do that all the time, right? So, for example, I wanted to be a professor. I knew I needed a PhD, so I created a hypothetical end. That is I went for a PhD. Yeah. And I had to do certain things in order to achieve that, right? So, we're human beings are end-setters. We normally will put hypothetical imperatives, and that's kind of what we do. Yeah. Now, the question is um what is judging these things? What is What is What is making one hypothetical imperative better than any other?

And what keeps you from using that end that you formulated for yourself as an end that doesn't run roughshod over all other individuals who are trying to pursue the same end. Yes. And that's why you have to have a guiding principle, which is basically what he calls a categorical imperative. And this is one that commands absolutely. And that is a rule that all rational agents can obey. And if you don't have a categorical imperative, you don't have an organizing principle, which in a sense judges the veracity of your hypothetical imperatives. It doesn't shed light on them. It doesn't give you avenues that are in fact good for achieving them. You can You can You can justify any means to your own end.

Um and the And categorical imperative is meant to be that uh that superstructure, if you will, that allows human beings to flourish with each other. We're not just running roughshod over other people, right? We're rational agents within social network with one another. And that requires that we behave morally. Uh it doesn't mean that we give up our hypothetical imperatives. I still Was it God's plan? Was it a categorical imperative for me to become a philosophy professor? Probably not. I had other venues, other things I could have done. Sometimes when I get my paycheck, I realize, man, what have I done to myself? Uh uh All seriousness aside, you know, um we are given some freedom within the parameters of the categorical imperative.

That's what is so beautiful about it. It's not pressing us down. It is in effect capstoning all of our hypothetical imperatives. It is It is It is helping us to see how to get from point A to point B and why point B matters to the social uh well-being of those around me. Yeah. You see, if I leave it if I run roughshod over people to get where I want to go, you're usurping moral laws as your highest incentive. You are not the kind of agent I want A leading my country or B leading my family C leading my community. Yeah. You want those who celebrate everyone as ends in themselves. And this is why the categorical imperative is so important. That's That's huge.

And I think you can even go back to the individual as well. You You don't You actually don't want to do that yourself because if you make I I think I think in terms of res- wrestling often cuz I was a wrestler, but if you make wrestling the the hypothetical um imperative of of being a a world champion wrestler, then you can rough run roughshod over all sorts of people. You can cheat and lie and steal and you can be selfish because whatever helps you get to that end can be justified as long as you get to that end. But at the at the end of the day, um your your relationships are all going to be terrible.

No one's going to want to work with you. It's going to be So, not only do we not want you in in charge of the the wrestling program or the country or your family, but you That kind of person shouldn't even be in control of their own life. Like you're going to You're ruining your life and it's going to be too late by the time you recognize it. Not that the state should come in or anything like that, but don't be that kind of person. Yeah, well, it becomes a model, right? In your own soul. It sort of becomes embodied, you know, in you and it be- It's transla- You You You and I both I was in sports and athletics in high school myself.

What a great metaphor for living life. I mean, I I get students here at Trinity who are in athletics and I just I use those metaphors all the time because there's some great lessons there. But doing it the right way is really important because you're not always going to be an athlete, right? You're going to need to step into other spheres and deal with people. And to the extent that you can treat others as ends themselves, as Kant puts it, as rational agents that are partnering with you towards noble ends, that's a big deal. That creates that creates all sorts of the kinds of things we want for a robust, uh you know, God-fearing, uh dispositionally robust, virtuous people.

Uh but to the extent that you run roughshod over people, you leave people in your wake and so forth because of how you did it back when you were in the athletic world or whatever, um that creates malcontents. It doesn't foster community. It yields enemies. Uh it creates the kinds of tensions that are very difficult for a group of people to overcome. Yeah. Um And so you're trying to create order all along the way of being the kind of person you were meant to be. Um And that's a that's a big deal, I think, for Kant. Yeah. Okay.

So So we have this moral law and it's kind of uh this uh indubitable indubitable or or uh this necessary this this first principle, this uh aspect of of human experience that we have. And so if we're we're going to continue on, we're all saying that we have this, we know right and wrong. So how how does Kant get there? Uh how does Kant go from the moral law to uh freedom? Okay. Yeah, well, you may uh you may remember while you're working on your Yeah. webcam utility there. Um Kant's philosophy is multifaceted. So he sets up a kind of dark backdrop in the beginning of his uh in in his quest, right?

He does the He does the ask this question, "What are the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience?" And when he finds space and time in the 12 categories, he realizes that the most important things in life, God, a future life, Mhm. morality, uh freedom, all of those things are not accounted for in immediate experience. And so, you were asking earlier about the reception. A lot of people who would want to, you know, lead our culture and our nation and our and our families down an atheistic or you know, antagonistic sort of perspective, they want to say, "Hey, Kant just cut us off from freedom and God and immortality. That's the Kant we like." But Kant never intended that to be That's a single perspective.

That is the perspective of opening your eyes on this journey we call life and being mystified by the fact that I'm here in the space-time continuum at a certain moment with certain contingent conditions, right? Here I am, I'm an American, I'm at Trinity, I find myself in a particular space and time, and all of these are mysteries. Right? Reason is impotent from a scientific standpoint to explain the whys, Yeah. right? Yeah. And Kant understands that. And if that's all reason is capable of doing, it um it it's it it might as well go retrograde to moral realism and, you know, every man for himself, you know, the Hobbesian state of nature sort of thing. Right.

But Kant doesn't believe that that's the only powers and and and and and operative powers that people have. Um now, how do we get to God, freedom, and immortality? That's the big question. Well, Kant thinks just like in his early philosophy, the transcendental method's the way to do it. And so, what are What would be a condition for the possibility of doing a right thing? Mhm. What does reason I to contribute to this. Well, any kind of moral activity, thinks Kant, has to be rooted in freedom. He thinks that that is is the playing field, if you will, like space and time is for immediate sense perception. Yeah. Freedom is the playing field for moral activity. Okay.

If we're not free, we shouldn't be talking about morality. We shouldn't be talking about any kind of ought. And I don't care what kind of ethical theorist you are, if from a Nietzschean to to B.F. Skinner to any of these guys, when they're talking about oughts, they're not they're they they they're not talking about freedom for one reason or another. They have to have freedom. Unless this ought doesn't make any sense. Yeah. Um and so Kant says freedom must be one of those conditions and as I'm we've talked about before, Parker, it's a necessary condition for the possibility of doing something right, but it's not a sufficient condition. Yeah.

Any kind of agency at all has to have a kind of freedom, but freedom has to be tethered to desires and we talked about those desires already, animality, humanity, and the moral law, right? Yeah. Uh as guiding desires for the human being. Now, freedom tethered to desires creates action. Mhm. Right? You If you just had freedom without desire, you wouldn't act. Yeah. You'd bump on the law. Right. to have some desires associated with them. Yeah. And those desires are unruly if they don't have a rule a rule of law, let's call the moral law. They're just It's not freedom at all. Freedom indeed is the ability to stand for the good.

Otherwise, you're just going down the river of contingent incentives, things that happen to you in nature, and you're just doing whatever you do. But freedom freedom is what allows us to stand in the river as a human being. Yeah. Right? And go against nature when it wars against our moral dispositions. And um And so, that's where freedom comes in for Kant is in the second move. Now, notice that freedom is not dealt with through sense perception. Mhm. Sense perception can't see freedom. In fact, it's always like B. F. Skinner looking for some prior cause for why you did what you did. And there's some value to that, by the way. Yeah.

Um you know, anybody's tried to go on a diet, for example, recognize you got to change your physical behaviors if you have the hope of getting there. But, the impetus for getting there has to be some higher good. Yeah. The moral law. Otherwise, it's it's being ruled by some other incentive. Yeah. Um So, there's where freedom comes in. Now, part of Kant's revolution, if I'm right, is not just the Copernican one, but it's this perspectival one. And that means, in order to have uh uh um beliefs about the metaphysical world, the world that isn't just purely physical, we have to have this what what I call a point of orientation Mhm. for understanding and adjudicating metaphysical matters.

And Kant makes an argument that freedom and the moral law are the point of orientation. It's the place where we know when our metaphysical beliefs are going astray. Mhm. If we have commands in our religion, say, to do something evil, the moral law says that religion has potentially some problems to it. Mhm. Right? Because it's the point of orientation. It's the place where you know what? If if it if it transcends the moral law as our highest incentive, then where is this metaphysical truth coming from? Was it created by man? Because God gave us freedom and the moral law to define us as genuinely human beings. Mhm.

And so, um one of the things, you know, that one of the applications of Kant's whole system has to do with comparative religions. Not all religions, not all cultures are treated equally. Mhm. Uh thinks Kant. Um you He's not really for multiculturalism because there are reprobate cultures. There are ones that celebrate the trans the the the the the circumventing of the moral law. Those are not the kind of places you want to live. Yeah. Um and they don't really have a lot to contribute to the ongoing human discussion of what it means to be good. Yeah.

Um you know, having lived around the world I can I you know, there's all sorts of places I'd rather not be than where I am here in the United States because at least we still talk about the moral law as being a guiding principle for our families and for our country. Yeah. Well, for for Kant when when he's talking about freedom here it is there a certain conception that he has that is this like necessarily like libertarian uh free will or is that is that anachronistic to to to put that in his mouth? Well, that's that's interesting that you that you raise it. Free will by definition is the power of choice, right?

The the ability to choose between opposing uh possibilities you might say or different possibilities. And to the extent that you don't have the power of choice, you don't have freedom, right? So that when when uh you know, if somebody straps you know, dynamite to you and they have a trigger point, they take away your power of choice, uh you become less of a moral agent, right? You're less culpable for your actions. The Patty Hearst trial many years ago, I think in the '70s, was all about her being brainwashed and robbing banks and so forth because of this cult that she was in. And to the extent that she was brainwashed and forced down certain pathways, she is less culpable. Yeah.

And so the law is trying to figure out how free was she really? You know, so freedom does matter. The power of uh of of contrary choice matters and in that sense it is libertarian. Mhm. But, it's not libertarian without restrictions. There's always boundaries for Kant. Okay. Boundaries are bittersweet. They're bitter because we want we innately want to transcend them. All right? We want to have other desires, you serve the moral laws, our highest incentive. That that's part of the human condition, you might say. But, they're liberating in the sense that they help us to see that there is a difference between good and evil. Mhm. If you take away the moral law, you take away our ability to distinguish good and evil.

Now, we can make it up culturally, and we can go with the spirit of the times, but we don't know if we're really good. You know, we don't have any moral grounds on which to stand. You see? And so, Kant Kant wants to say that like space-time and the 12 categories, which again are bittersweet, Yeah. we can't experience the way of the world the way God does, but we can experience the world. Similarly, in our moral activities, we can't do anything we want to do just because we want to do it. Yeah. Um we can experience all good things if they are good, all things considered. All right? For all rational agents, if they are if they are organized by principles that everybody can obey.

Yeah. Um when you when you when you occasionally deviate that from that, you know, you're becoming a god unto yourself. Yeah. You are trying to create your own laws that are that are not universalizable, that are not for all rational agents, they're just for you and your sphere of influence. Yeah. And that is the definition of corruption for Kant. Yeah. So, so with with practical reason, I I literally cannot transcend the categories. Uh I can't see the the thing in itself, and I think he's right in that. I I think a Christian should ought to ought to be able to say that because we say we don't see angels, but we affirm that there are angels that exist.

So, I don't have the categories to see the spiritual realm like that. Um or if I do, then they are only turned on when God wants me to see those kind of things, right? So, yeah, we don't see the thing in itself, but we see it as he intended us to see. So, I can't transcend that. Maybe I don't know, maybe you take hallucinogenics or something, but even then But with the moral law, it seems like you can transcend it. It's just to transcend it or uh to go against it is just it's it's evil. It's wicked. It's It's It Is that right? Is that we can we can transcend one or we can disobey one, but we can't the other? That's right.

Well, look, um you know, the whole thing about epistemology in general is is a hot topic these days, right? Uh and and and what many or perhaps most philosophers are coming to is is the point of realization that faith what what might be called warranted or justified faith uh pervades all of our claims to truth, right? And Kant's no different, right? Um when we experience something in immediate sense perception, right? We have to have a certain modicum of belief that is there, right? And a certain measure of humility that we could be tricked, you know, this is Descartes's whole term.

Uh and yet critical reasoning says we can do science because we have the operative faculties that allows us to see the way the world appears to us. And that we can look at it from various angles, and the critical thinker and critical scientist is able to make progress on these appearances. Mhm. Similarly, when we're talking about metaphysics, those are the For Kant, those things are more important than the physical People don't die for physical truths. They die for dispositional truths. They die for freedom. They die for love. They die for justice. They die for truth. They don't die for the fact that there's a podium in front of me here that's holding up my laptop. Yeah. Yeah. Who cares, right?

But we do care about our freedoms. We do care about um beauty and about the the preservation of beauty. We do care about justice and love and encourage and all of these things that are not seen, but we know them when we experience them in our souls, right? And so Kant wants to say, "How do we make a a critical headway in understanding what's a legitimate a metaphysical belief and what is it what you might call an illegitimate for the lack of a better word metaphysical belief. What is What is enthusiasm? What is superstition? Yeah. What is going beyond the pale of you know maybe transcending the moral law and so forth? And Kant thinks that faith matters, but not just any faith.

Remember the first critique he's against the skeptic Yeah. who would deny the existence of God because that's a faith move, right? And he has no evidence for the non-existence of God. Right. But he's also against the dogmatist who's holding to a whole set of metaphysical truths just willy-nilly, right? Yeah. The world is full of religions that hold things for various reasons. How do we make judgments with regards to which of these things is right and which one's wrong? Well, reason gives us a certain set of criteria. And they're not all that different from from the classic notions in the Western tradition of truth, goodness, and beauty. Yeah. And Kant thinks that we're innately given as human beings the ability to understand the facts through science.

Yeah. We're innately given the ability to understand the good through the moral law and the use of freedom. And we're innately given the the ability to assess beauty, thinks Kant, my understanding of the highest good and the possibility that human beings might last forever and we want to maintain the kind of purposiveness that we feel in nature. Yeah. And that's what art really is all about. And so Kant gives us a certain set of criteria for determining what is a rational religious belief and what is something that goes beyond the pale, if you will, of rationality.

And uh that's where it gets kind of interesting for me because uh you know, we've talked in the past about what a rational religious faith would look like, but it has to be free. It uh it has to have God and immortality associated with it unless it goes morally retrograde very quickly, thinks Kant. It goes back to nihilism very quickly. But it can't just have those things. Those things have a certain structure to them, thinks Kant, that every rational belief has to have. And in one of our uh previous podcast, kind of I I mentioned to you that Kant really boils it down to the realization that human beings tend to usurp the moral law as their highest incentive. They tend to be bad. Right.

And anybody's trying you know, C. S. Lewis said, anybody who thinks being good is easy hasn't tried. Right. Right. Right. Um and so they tend to be we recognize we tend to be bad. We recognize that God has to step in to help us by presenting us with a revolutionary disposition that we can latch hold of in faith. And then we have to band together with other people who are convinced by these same principles in the form of a church or a what he calls an ethical commonwealth. And these are sort of basic non-negotiables, thinks Kant, for rational faith.

If your faith uh doesn't have the possibility of a revolution, a conversion to the good principle, Kant calls it, then it's probably not going to serve you very well. Yeah. You tend to be bad, right? You tend to go morally retrograde unless you have a good disposition that God would give you. And you know, we talked about this in one of our previous talks that is both divine and human. You you really don't have any hope of stopping yourself from going retrograde. And then if you don't band together with other converts, you're always going to be under the threat of going back to your old self. Yeah.

And so if human striving is about going forward toward the good, toward God, toward the life to come for Kant. If you if you stop that quest, you end up going retrograde very quickly, things Kant. And that's kind of uh um you know, that's kind of the journey we're all on in life. That we're not finished products, you know? Yeah. And that's that sort of fits what Kant's saying. That we don't become finished products, but we have to believe certain things about the nature of reality if this is indeed a meaningful universe. Yeah. That that strikes me earlier what you you were saying about the transcendentals, the truth, goodness, and beauty. And that that seems like that's what his project is following.

The first critique is truth, right? Second critique is goodness, and then the third might be beauty there. Um Yes. So so it's the the French Revolution Yeah, well so so getting getting on to um You so many things are are popping up for me right now, but getting on to the moral argument for God. So in the French Revolution, they set up this cult some of them set up this cult of reason, and they all went crazy retrograde retrograde and they're they're lopping people's heads off in the square. And so some people might think, well, you know, we follow Kant's follow Kant's lead. He's he's having the he's having reason guide us, so we're going to make reason God.

And then they they went crazy retrograde. How does Kant get us to God from from moral reasoning? Wow, that's woo. This is a good question, Parker. Uh Well, here's here's the deal. By the time we get to a fully orbed understanding of reason, it has these three perspectives, right? Science, morality, and let's call it art or beauty. Yeah. Right? And when we experience beauty, things Kant, nature is testifying to a meaningful universe. We feel a sense of harmony between nature and freedom. Yeah. Like we thought it was against us. I'm I'm uh lost your your volume here. Dr. Feser, you there? Oh, Dr. Feser, can you can you hear me there? You're uh you're muted there. You're muted, yeah. Uh you know what?

I think Can you hear me? Yep. Okay, sorry. Yeah. Sometimes there regenerates with this and it goes shut for a second. So so last thing I heard was um was uh nature and beauty uh they're not against us. Right. That that that the beauty in nature testifies that this is a meaningful world. And that for a moment we believe it. But when we try to name it and the realities of life hit us, you know, we're all going to die, for example. We're all you know, sometimes the you know, as David in the Psalms laments, you know, that the that the vicious are rewarded and the virtuous suffer.

And all of these sorts of things threaten to undermine the the purposefulness that we feel when we see that beautiful sunset and whatnot. And so this is the problem that human beings find themselves in is that we believe there's something in us that believes there's more to this world than meets the eye, but nature constantly threatens to undermine justice and undermine the highest good as Kant puts it. And so, what should we be about doing? Well, there's two things. There's two venues here. One is the political for Kant, and the other is the religious. Yeah. And the two are both required to resolve this problem, thinks Kant.

We need to have government that creates rules and laws that enhance the likelihood that virtue is rewarded and vice is punished, right? That that it it it it re- redefines the way the natural order, you might say, presents itself to us by creating human institutions that actually do this. And now, there are certain Kant scholars, again, there's a variety of subfields in Kant studies, Mhm. who want to end it right there. That is, all the hope of humanity rests in the government, right? Yeah. And creating governments and governmental uh institutions that enhance the purposiveness that we feel. And uh this is what I call the humanistic uh uh interpretation of Kant, that that the political and I'm I'm I'm half for it, right?

I'm all for government. I'm all for good government that it that does these kinds of things. So, I'm not against humanists on this score at all. Yeah. Um but they're human institutions. And one of the things we know is they have to be populated by people who've been converted to the good principle. If they're not, then they're going to be creating visions of the highest good of their own making. Yeah. Not of ones that really are the highest good. Mhm. This is one of the problems with art in general is that it is never divine art. It's always human art.

And human art, thinks Kant, is prone to error and accentuation and hyperbole and uh human elements that are never quite the good that we hope for. So, it is important that governments that that we uphold governments, that we be obedient to governments, that we that we recognize their importance in a civil society and for enhancing our quest to be uh humans and good people and so forth. All of that's really important. And Kant thinks it's important. He spends a lot of time in this area and this is how the United Nations got started, for example. This this umbrella group that is trying to respect all individual persons and all individual cultures and entities as ends in themselves. Yeah. That's all Kantian deontological stuff.

And by I have no problem with any of that. Yeah. The problem I have, and the same one I think Kant eventually has, is the realization that without a revolution of your disposition, without God and immortality, all of these things are bound to fail. Yeah. Uh he thinks we have to have we have to have people who are good. Yeah. Who are been converted to the good principle, that we have to have institutions and places where that is celebrated. And this is why, you know, there's two versions of Kant's later philosophy. One is the standardized secular government's going to solve all your problems version of Kant. Right.

And the other one is the one I think Kant actually holds, and that is that no culture is without religious artifacts. Every culture needs to have things in place, places for people to go where people who are banding together under the good principle, morally converted to belief in God in a future life and the quest of human beings in this life to to to be good, those kinds of places are very visceral, they're very concrete, they're very empirical. And Kant says that society needs to have these kinds of things. Uh so, I'm not going to really get into this church and state the question. That's a very interesting question. One that maybe we can talk about it some other point.

But his point is that the vision, I think for Kant that the vision for in a a society that is aspiring to the good is not a sanitized secularized place. It's a place that has religion everywhere and it has certain beliefs that are associated with rational religion that all religions are aspiring unto. And in our last conversation we talked about some of those things that true religion needs to have in it. It needs to have the celebration of the good principle and a conversion to to to God and immortality and belief in the moral law and so forth. Without such places Kant doesn't give us much hope of ever being the kind of society we know we ought to be. Yeah.

Well, so just in my mind is a is a counterpoint or counter example. I have like the the Sadducees. And for those who don't know, they they they denied the resurrection. They didn't think that we would would have immortality. So they believed in God. They believed in in government. They believed in the moral law. But they said there is no resurrection from the dead. So what are they missing? How do I I skipped over it because I was antsy. I wanted to get to to the God question. But why is immortality so important for this whole picture? Yeah, well um Well, there's various visions of immortality that I hear from scholars. And a lot of them can be traced to a certain perspective of Kant.

That's what makes him such a great philosopher, right? Is that he he there's so much that falls under his umbrella. So for example, I have a friend that lives not too far from me here. Pretty accomplished guy who believes in immortality in the sense of um passing on to his kids virtues, right? And that's kind of immortality that it will resonate through the ages and so forth. And frankly Kant's not against that, right? I mean that's a great thing to do. But it is a finite thing to do. It doesn't It doesn't recognize the seriousness of the problem, right?

It It It It hopes for some future in some future future in some future future in which we somehow um get to a utopian state maybe or a better place or some such thing. Um and that is for Kant, I think well I need to be careful at this point, right? Because Kant only gets so far in his own in his own music, right? Yeah. Kant wants to say, you know, remember he he dies before he well, he depend depending on how you read Kant, does he get to his full philosophy or doesn't he get to his full Right, right. But he dies rather satisfied with a methodology that he set out, right?

And and that basically says um that in order for reason not to go retrograde, to go backward we have to believe that our moral strivings are worth it, right? That they will actually matter. And they'll matter not only for my children, but for me as well. Yeah. You see, I I don't have the kind of moral strengths, if you will, to maintain my duty, my my my allegiance to what I ought to do if I am worried that my own soul won't be well-pleasing to God Yeah. at the end of the day. Um if I pass that on to my kids, that they will somehow be better than me what I quickly realize is that ain't that's not going to happen, right?

And very often times we see this kids are never as good as the parents, you know, at least the ones we have. Uh that's probably with monarchies, right? Right, exactly. Exactly. can to a great monarch, but dang it, they're not passing on their greatness to their kids the way they thought they were. Yeah, it's not biological like that. Yeah. Yeah, well, it's a there's a lack of realism there. What you are is a non-realist in disguise of a realist. Mhm. Right? For Kant, you actually have to believe God is the author of the world. You actually have to believe that he created you. You actually have to believe that he has a purpose for your life.

And that he's going to make good on it at the end of the day. And that the highest good will one day win. You see, if you don't believe that, then there's nothing that keeps you from going retrograde when life strangles you as it oftentimes will try to do. Yeah. Uh that's why we, you know, those who are converted to the good principle, those are our believe in God and God's work on our behalf and that they will one day be called to account and so forth. That's why they can stand against the currents Yeah. of the here and now. Um because they believe it's real. You see, this is a realist position.

It's not a non-realist one, which says all we need are the ideas floating out there in some way and that gives us enough to go on. That doesn't give us enough to go on. the concrete. Yeah, and that helps us stand up in the river that's that's pulling us down that's trying out you we can take a step back and look up because it's a concrete thing. It's not just an abstraction. That's right. And and uh you know, Kant's own system seems to in my reading of Kant's system seems to require this. That is, there are certain readers of Kant that say the only thing you need is a soul, believe in the reality of the soul.

And Kant himself says a few things along these lines. Why why would I drag this body around with me for all eternity? Mhm. You know, he says stuff like this. But you quickly realize that believe in the soul and a future life and moral progress and becoming what God meant us to be requires embodiment uh in order for it to actually really matter. How do I How does a soul progress in virtue, right? Yeah. It's hard to It's hard to fathom without embodiment and so forth. So, in my So, in my own work, I argue, and this is beyond Kant, right?

This is taking his basic methodology and saying, "Kant set up the whole system so that philosophy and theology would forever be in conflicting engagement with one another. That's the way he set up the university." You remove theology, and now you all you have is human invention and enterprise Yeah. arguing for our noble ends, as whatever we happen to think they are. You need that right, yeah. You need that that battle, yeah. Yeah, God has something to say about what it means to be human. And that we ought to be listening to that. But there are a lot of versions of God's word out there, right? I mean, we know them. You know, the Bhagavad Gita, the Quran, the Book of Mormon.

There's a lot of these out there. So, we have to have a way of, you know, adjudicating which ones are aspiring uh under truth, and which ones are kind of you know, not measuring up to the critical and needs of reason. And that's why I think Christianity shines for Kant. Because it constantly presses the questions that matter to the human beings and offers us solutions that we are struggling to utter. And when we hear them, we go, "Dang, that's pretty good." All right? And when we hear competitors, we go, "That's interesting." We don't say, "Wow, that resonates with truth." We usually say, "Man, you have the right to say that. That's very interesting, but did it really happen? Or, you know, is it moral?

Or, Can you live it? is it really a beautiful image that would attract a human being to quest after it for their whole life? Uh you know, there's a lot of these kind of questions that we would bring to comparative religions Yeah. that that may not be politically correct, but every human being kind of knows it thinks Kant that within us are needs to answer the basic questions of who am I, uh you know, what ought I to do, and if I do what I ought to do, what do I what hope do I have of being found well-pleasing to God at the end of this venture? And these are basic questions that all human beings ask themselves, thanks Kant.

Um and they really they really don't allow any old metaphysical belief to stand up to close scrutiny. Yeah. Um they simply don't. Um and we need to come to grips with that. Everybody has to choose who their master is and who they have and and and what what pathway they're going to walk. Yeah. Oh, that's fantastic. So so then we have we have Kant's uh transcendentals of the the world, God, and the soul. Um for for Kant, maybe he didn't get here, but when it comes to the moral law, is the moral law for Kant an aspect of God's nature that he prescribes to us, or is it you know, it's like the Euthyphro dilemma.

You know, it is uh for Kant, what what is the moral law? Is it something God God can be arbitrary in, or is it conformed to his nature, or is it a Platonic form? Yeah. Um those are good questions because remember, one of the things about reading Kant well is to recognize that Kant is doing an epistemic exercise here. He's not actually claiming per se um uh he's not making judgments about the employment of reason before it's employed. He's trying to ask the question, what are the conditions within reason that make it employable, right? What is it that would that would make an experience possible to me? What is it that would make an you know, a good action possible for me?

What is it that would make an experience of beautiful beauty possible for me? And so he's raising those kinds of questions. So when he comes up to the moral law and he says, "Look, there is this thing called the moral law that we must believe exists, right? Yeah. Um it's it's it's a it's it's an epistemic thing that says, "Look, if there is a difference between good and evil, we must believe in the moral law." And remember that the logos that is reason Mhm. is for Kant a kind of meaningfulness or spark of divinity that we share as human beings. Mhm.

And so you can't really get away things, Kant, I don't think from God and immortality as being part of that spark of divinity because it has an explo- you know, where's this coming from? How is it grounded, right? Um and so forth. And so when Kant talks about the moral law, he will oftentimes add the caveat that we must believe it is a divine command. As if it came from the mouth of God. Mhm. Um and so he he's got that language all over the place, uh particularly in his writings on religion and so forth. Where he says, "Morality by itself is completely self-sufficient. It speaks to us behind the veil, as it were, whenever we uh we uh experience goodness and and so forth.

And that, you know, the moral law is a kind of revelation to us. Like, let's call it natural revelation in the classic classic categories. It speaks to us. It teaches us. It it it conforms or should conform our desires and so forth. Um and yet Kant wants to, you know, he's Cartesian and he's in the modern period, right? He's an Enlightenment thinker. He wants to Before he employs and looks at Christianity or looks at Buddhism or looks at some of these alternatives, he says, "We've got to take stock of what it is we bring to the table as human beings before we do that hard work of critical thinking as to what the truth is in these areas, in these spheres, uh these other authorities, you might say, that are pressing themselves in on us.

And this is where the moral law and freedom come in because they're they're they're they're basic parts of human nature that are part of our toolbox for making those judgements. What religion celebrates the moral law as your highest incentive? Which which which set of metaphysical beliefs resonate or are consonant with these things and which ones are not because that's our toolbox. If they're against these things implicitly, then there's probably something wrong with them, right? Um it gets you know, just foreshadowing here a little bit, it gets really interesting when we get to existentialism and we you know, the story let's say of Abraham and Isaac.

You know, this kind of thing because there appear to be examples in scripture where God is commanding something contrary to the moral law. Right. What makes it such an extraordinary narrative is that it appears to be saying that God is the author of the moral law. Right? And that voice usurps any other voice including the one where you thought you should not kill your son Isaac. And there's this extraordinary moment in the Old Testament and the New Testament where it's where it says to us where it's trying to teach us that God and the moral law aren't backed cotemporaneous with one another or consonant with one another and it finds fulfillment in the ultimate sacrifice that is God's son. Yeah.

Um and there we see the two all of these things meeting in one person. Yeah. And that if you latch hold of his disposition in faith, you have hope. Um you know, so this is part of that overarching narrative that a scripture cuz scripture is intuitively aware of the importance of the moral law. Right. That's what makes that whole sacrificial moment so dramatic. Yeah. And then that's what called God's hand back because God's the author of all the law vows, all of the moral law, all of that which is true, beautiful, and good. Yeah. And we find it's sort of culminating moment there in Isaac and then of course in its in its fulfillment in Jesus Christ. That's so fantastic.

And yeah, that's it's like you could do a full biblical theology from the perspective of the moral law, you know, you could start with Genesis and Adam and Eve and they failed and you could go down through their lineage and all the way to to yeah, you go Abraham and Isaac and then see the the staying of the hand and then the fulfillment in Christ and and then our yeah, our instantiating that and in following, you know, our our hero following Christ and being Christian trying to trying to follow that though we you know, we put our faith in him so we don't have to we don't have to live perfectly and we we recognize that we can't. That's right.

Well, that's the beauty of the law grace distinction, right? There there's a time when the law is a is a social, political, religious institution that's trying to set up constructs that would enable you to be obedient to God's call. Right. And so all of that is found in the Old Testament in singling out a people, right? And as as as and then the promise that that would then of course be uh be be made available to all people. Yeah, city on the hill and yeah, welcome them in, yeah. Yes.

Yes, but it but implicit in all of that is the social political structure that must be set up for us to even begin to have the hope of being found well pleasing to God, Yeah. right? And ultimately it is found in God making available to us a new self. Yeah. Right? And that all of this is about faith and about belief in God's saving action history, right? And and so forth and making this available to us in an act of faith. Yeah. But faith, you know, I the it'd be a great way to sort of culminate here that faith is like a sixth sense, right?

It is that ability to trust in God, in his plan for your life, in his hope for a future, in the future embodiment where we will meet our maker and so forth. And all of that is what what I think is a is a is a reasonable faith based upon the testimony of nature and of the moral law and of beauty, which says this all matters. God doesn't make crap, right? He intends to fulfill his creation. Yeah. You know, he created you and me. He's not going to let us, you know, wither away into nothing. There's everything in us says that if God is who he said he was, then he will raise up this body to something that can't be made that way.

It can't can't be corrupted. Everything in us is saying, can this possibly be true? And everything in scripture and so forth and even in reason itself is pointing us in that direction, to those beliefs. Man, that's awesome. That is a great way to bring it together. Yeah, with with our new self, our new freedom, in in our incorruptible bodies that we have for for all eternity. We're immortal and we get to spend, you know, eternity with God living as as we ought to have in the first place as our as our forefather ought to have. That's that's fantastic. I This is this has been so helpful, uh, Dr. Firestone. I'd I'd love to have you back on.

Like you said, there a lot of threads kind of lead back to Kant and the great part about that is we can do multiple episodes from different perspectives and different aspects of Kant's philosophy. Is there is there um If someone wanted to get in touch with you and talk more, is there a way that that someone can reach you? Absolutely. Yeah, I'm you know, I'm available at Trinity here. an email. It's uh cfirestoe without the n e at the end @tiu.edu. That's my direct email. Um happy to, you know, Oh, you you went mute one more time there, Dr. Firston. Well, yeah, one more time. Here we go. Uh yeah, um you know, there's a there's an ebb and flow to the school year.

Right now, we're in the thick of the school time, but uh you know, once May comes around and I shift to uh other things like book writing and so forth, I have more time. Um so, but yeah, happy to happy to hear from people uh who have been impacted and want to know more. Maybe I can turn them on to some sources or or whatnot if they're interested in Trinity coming to study with me. Love to hear from them. Yeah, and so forth. Yeah, that's fantastic. Well, um again, I've I've I've loved this conversation. I I always learn so much from you. So, I'm glad to share this with other people.

Um Lord willing, we can talk about this more, and I think someday we will, someday soon, uh hopefully. But for now, that's going to have to do it. This has been Parker's Pensees, and as always, all glory to God.