The first reaction to Kant's synthesis of reason and experience came from Thomas Reid (1710-1796), a Scottish philosopher. Remember that Kant maintained that you cannot know the "thing-in-itself," only your experience of it. Reid argued the opposite side: you can know the world directly, without the mediation of ideas. You are able to make self-evident moral judgments, based on principles which take precedence over experience. Because you have rational freedom, you are the cause of your experience, not just a reactor to it.

The school Reid founded, "Scottish 'Common-Sense' Realism," soon became the official philosophy of Princeton Seminary and of conservative Christianity in America. Through B. B. Warfield and others, it achieved great influence in this country and culture. The primary reason you've not heard of or wrestled with Kant's ideas is that your culture has not. Common sense dictates that you know reality, and that's good enough for most of us.

As a result, the Kantian denial of absolutes has met no real intellectual resistance in our culture. Relativism is appealing to a people who want independence from absolute ethics or truths. And because we've not interacted seriously with the Kantian sources of relativism and pluralism, we have no intellectual answer for this threat.

Common-sense realism defines the way most Americans think about how they think. That's both good and bad.