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Kant vs Rand

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