5000-04

Is not this insight of Burke more indebted to Kant than to Hegel? We are here again reminded of the German Idealists, the latter of whom were themselves victims of a fraudulent simplification. In the attempt to save the ancient world from itself, they artificially suppressed or even inhibited the growth of the human type through selective distortions. The suppression of the human type through cleverness is what led to the invention of the science of ethics, which is why, as Kant put it, the wise man treats his cleverness "as a great deed" (uth Regeln). Now, the same goes for the modern sciences. It is not that the truth is not known, but, on the contrary, that it is known that it is not even the best way to know. The absolute difference between Hegel and Kant is here not the form of knowledge but the content of knowledge itself.