Immanuel Kant's Call Me Maybe

Kall Me Maybe

Immanuel Kant throughout all his philosophical books and ideas are extremely hard to grasp and get a good understanding for him and his ideas. However, with Carly Rae Jepsen, the Canadian singer phenomenon and her song “Call Me Maybe”, it helps us understand Kant’s ideas a whole lot better. In Carly’s song, “Call Me Maybe” she sings, “Your stare was holdin’, Ripped jeans, skin was showin’ Hot night, wind was blowin’”. Carly is describing the phenomenal world. Kant believed that the phenomenal world, “is what we can see (grass, cars, buildings”. In his book, Critique of Pure Reason, it states, “all our intuition is nothing but the representation of appearance”. This helps us question Carly, was this boy really staring meaningfully
into her eyes, or did he really just glance at her with no special thought. Kant believed that, “there are no simple ‘facts’...therefore it is difficult to say what we can know for certain”. What appeared to Carly was a lustful look from her crush, however this moment may have meant nothing to the boy. The real intentions and feelings in this brief time period is nothing we can ever know for certain.

Another critical belief of Immanuel Kant is the contrast between phenomena and noumenal.
The phenomena was described by Kant as, “what we perceive with our senses… you are a phenomenal reality for everyone else- all they know about you is what you show to them”. Kant then distinguishes the phenomena from the noumenal, by describing the noumenal as, “things as they are in themselves… the real ‘you’ is a noumenal reality, you exist in yourself, irrespective of other people’s perceptions of you”. Carly sings about her own noumenal reality when she sings, “I’d trade my soul for a wish, pennies and dimes for a kiss… you took your time with the call, I took no time with the fall… you gave me nothing at all, but still you’re in my way”. Carly describes her noumena and sings about her lust, love, and desire for this boy. She is desperately in love with him although it seems he may not recuperate the same feelings. This desperate love and passion Carly feels for the boy, can only be really known by Carly. Although, others may know that Carly has caught feelings for the boy, Carly is the only one who can ever know her true feelings for the boy. Carly will only know the boy from a phenomenal reality, as we are limited to what we know and understand, and in reality we know absolutely nothing. Furthermore, Carly only knows the boy as what she has been able to “perceive with [her] senses”. Only the boy will know what the stare meant- as he is the only one able to exist in his noumenal
reality.

“Kant believed that what makes us human is that, unlike other animals, we can think reflectively about our choices.
We would be like machines if we couldn’t do things on purpose.” The main basis of Carly’s song “Call Me Maybe” is that the boy she is infatuated with will call and talk to her. But why did Carly chose to do this? The reason Carly wants the boy to call her is because of her deep and passionate love for this boy. She sings, “it’s hard to look right at you baby” Carly is so smitten by the boy that just by looking at him sends butterflies into her stomach. “Before you came into my life I missed you so bad” Carly has always known something was missing in her life, and this boy is her missing piece. Because of her intense passion and love for the boy is why she chooses to pursue him.“I’d trade my soul for a wish, pennies and dimes for a kiss” Carly is so in love with this boy that she’d chose to do anything for him- because she is human she has the ability to make choices and reflect on them she chooses to do everything and anything for her crush, as he means everything to
her.