Kant vs Rand - Rucka Rucka Ali

GRAPHIC RAP BATTLE DEBATES OF PHILOSOPHY!

IMMANUEL KANT VS AYN RAND!

BEGIN!

When the Enlightenment was standing on its final flimsy toe

Everybody said just go with what you already know

I stepped in and rescued, the Age of Reason was restored

Your faculties are divided into 2 forms

One is Intuition: when my fist immediately strikes your face

And Understanding afterwards with concepts you place

Giving identity both to your face and to my punches

This is called Judgement, now is Judgement Day

I have awoken from my dogmatic slumber with solutions

And reversed us into a Copernican Revolution

Of philosophy, a reversal of the trend

With which all philosophers after me will be required to contend

There are 2 worlds, the real one is called Noumenal

You can think of it but cannot know it, it’s the true form

Which determines how your consciousness picks up material

Which appears but isn’t real, it’s all phenomenal

If you wish to find conclusive evidence, stop it!

You cannot see an object, you only see the process

Of perception which distorts your vision, but you use to see

What is ethical, you ask me?

Duty!

Your respect for moral law must replace your inclinations

The pursuit of what you want is reprehensible and dangerous

Unless the thing you want is to be moral

Then you are permitted to enjoy your moral status

My Categorial Imperative supplies you with commandments and a purpose

We will all act as arbiters of ethics and its servants

Every action must be eligible as universal law

And together we’ll build a Kingdom of Ends like never before

That was cute, Immanuel, but you saved the Age of Reason

Like a slave master saves his subject from the pains of freedom

For over 2 centuries, you’ve made the world abhorrent

But today, I have diss bars more extensive than your forehead

Your premises are faulty, you’re salty at existence

To the point that you declare reality is mere appearance

You make reason a mere exercise to make some room for faith

Just like you’d let in Epstein asking if there’s children at your place

One mustn’t compromise with evil, and the rational is the good

But just a drop of mysticism is like poison in your food

You could do much better, Kant.

Well, on second thought, you can’t

You’re so dishonest you’ve automatized the lies you tell yourself

Now let’s be objective, I know a thing or two about it

Your existence plus my consciousness equals headache for hours

Your senses don’t distort, they have a nature of perception

To deny your observations is worse than a contradiction

You could not be this big a moron while also being its opposite

So try applying Aristotle’s logic to your consciousness

And see what you’ve become, the most evil of all philosophers

I’d know you’re German even if you didn’t speak like Schwarzenegger

You’re being destroyed, boy, like you destroyed the fate of Europe

By exploiting all the errors made by philosophers before ya

John couldn’t Locke an object to its features

Giving Hume the skepticism that you needed to unleash epistemic doom

And separate reality from reason so deceitfully

You’re like Plato on crack, he couldn’t sink so low to think that man is

Deaf for having ears, blind for having eyes

And now men willingly march into gulags peacefully to die

An ethics of duty?

How original, Manny

Like a heavenless, malevolent rendition of Christianity

Your altruism justifies the sacrifice of man

But now you’re burning at the stake like the mistakes on which your premises

depend

Nice speech, Rand, if just a bit long

I will admit you write a decent 3-hour monologue

But please stick to writing novels, your philosophy’s crappy

And much like Epstein, you make 14-year-olds happy

I’m regarded as one of the greats, you’re a boring phase

For adolescents with the moral code for no one making less than Bill Gates

This is ridiculous, we’re not in the same boat

I am taught at Yale and Harvard, you’re on clearance in Barnes & Noble

If we were in the same boat, you would push me off the ledge

To stretch your legs and you’d call it «the virtue of selfishness»

We both never had kids, but the difference between us?

I left a legacy, you left quotes on pins and t-shirts

You never had children?

Oh Kant, I beg to differ

Your philosophy gave birth to Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Hitler

I’m the spirit granddaughter of the inventor of fire

I put every philosopher in history on trial

Reconcile their dichotomies and prosecute their crimes

Most of their work is defiled by evasions and denial

I can integrate the moral with the practical, emotions with the brain

And solve Plato’s concept problem in a story about trains

I could explain the relation of causality to consciousness, existence with

identity, the body with the mind

You want an A in philosophy?

I’ll give you 3: Aristotle, Aquinas

And Ayn

END BATTLE