Kant's invention of the metaphor

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant notices that the only way reason can hope to fulfill the completeness it seeks for, besides in a constitutive way, is to employ reason regulatively: to proceed in the employment of reason 'as if' there is unity or purpose or completeness in this world. At first glance, this solution seems a little ridiculous. And it is, if one understands this philosophy of the 'as if' narrowly, to be performing a designated technical function of creating illusions about things which are not really there for reason's apprehension. Indeed, this is precisely the function Kant requires of it. But at the same time, setting aside the actual job of the 'as if' in Kant's system, I note that Kant discovers the metaphor by discovering the as if: as if he is saying, "completeness" but not literally, but metaphorically. He thus interprets the metaphorical use of reason as its central and definitive employment, and therefore puts the "scare quotes" around completeness. It is, a "so to speak" completeness - a "so to speak" philosophy.
And this is no mean achievement, for by doing this, Kant recaptures the very gesture of philosophy: philosophy as solipsistic self-stimulation, as speculation (as Hegel reads it), or (as Schopenhauer reads it) atheism and non-meaning (if by meaning we mean something literal), or as a tragic abysmal view of life that sees no secure ground to stand on, as the non-belief in the grammar and logic of language, as the free license to express even the minutest thought and experience as hiding a wealth of debris (the last three as Nietzsche views it), or the play of interpretations (Gadamer/Derrida), or as the concern with art, beauty, imagination and free-play that tip-toes above all the seriousness and gravity of analytic salvation-seekers (as the entire post-structuralist movement). Kant's metaphor reveals the complete lack of a language that philosophy can call its own, that it had been parasitic on a scientific language that has now claimed its independence. In short, Kant's invention of the metaphor shows the inevitable truth: the flickering existence of philosophy, which nevertheless refuses to extinguish itself.

First & third world

In today's world, the mark of self-sufficiency, growth and economic maturity and independence of a nation is indicated by two factors: (i) whether a large number of foreigners wish to visit or settle in that nation - either to make a living or for business purposes or for spiritual excursions or to explore the nation's cultural richness or for other reasons that a tourist might give; ii) whether the nation has earned the right to say that it does not want foreigners on its soil, if it wanted to.
Even if many of the African and Asian countries, like India, satisfy the first condition, they fail the second. They fail the second condition either because they cannot reject foreign infiltration without risking economic loss and alienation, which is always an impending threat in today's globalized world; or because they feel the need "to be told" what to do, what to aim for, which direction to take by the leading first world countries; (or both). This latter dependency is a strange one since it is a sort of cultural slavery on the part of these ancient, albeit now, "dead" cultures, making them look up to the "master" western cultures as the leaders of this culture of globalization that began in the last century. The reason why these ancient cultures end up being slaves in this game is because they feel that only by being so they can hold onto the nostalgia of a lost cultural and spirtual greatness. The choice is straightforward: either be a spiritually bankrupt, barbaric nation without this nostalgia or be a barbaric nation with this memory attached like a parasite. The more a nation belongs in the former camp, more is its self-sufficiency and potential for leadership. Hence, America.

No thing-in-itself

We always project ourselves onto everything: what we believe, what we see, what we hear, what we feel, what we think and what we sense are discoveries of our own projections. That tree there, that building here, this God above me, this person below me : all my projections of my own inner alleys and secrets. This is how we carve out our space in the world, however fluid and mobile this space really is. We discover only what we invent, and then our eternal stupidity never ceases to be surprised at these very discoveries as if they were given to us by an external source. Eternal naivety - that's behind this wretched Unheimlichkeit!
There is an outside world - the great seducer - which is forever beyond our grasp. As the wanderer proclaimed: We are always in our own company...