Good essay. Your comment ("My own suspicion is that if there is an answer to them, it lies in Transcendental Idealism, and the final say on the matter (as if there could ever be such a thing) will involve a synthesis of these two philosophies.") is something I would definitely agree with. I had this suspicion as well, and unsurprisingly there is a rich if niche philosophical tradition that covers this synthesis. I recently finished Fichte's Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre in the recent translation by Daniel Breazeale, which is I think what you're looking for - a transcendental idealist system inspired by Kant infused with Spinozist tendencies towards pantheism. The scholar Dieter Henrich calls it the "Spinozism of Freedom," i.e. a system that proceeds like the Ethics (viz. the geometrical deductions), except based not from absolute determinism but from absolute freedom. The Wissenschaftslehre is more concerned with metaphysics and epistemology than ethics or religion, but there is a place in the system for both. Anyway, check out Fichte. He's a criminally underrated philosopher, partially because he was caught between Kant and Hegel in the timeline, partially because his style of writing is very off-putting to the amateur (but clear to anyone who puts in effort). Breazeale's translator introduction and Henrich's lectures on German idealism are also very good secondary literature on the topic.
Studying the history of philosophy is such a double edged sword, isn't it? You get the exhilirating feeling of thinking you might have unearthed something new, and then realize that someone else already thought of that centuries ago. Still, you get the gratification that somebody else did in fact have the same thought, so you at least haven't gone crazy along the way (yet).
Good essay. Your comment ("My own suspicion is that if there is an answer to them, it lies in Transcendental Idealism, and the final say on the matter (as if there could ever be such a thing) will involve a synthesis of these two philosophies.") is something I would definitely agree with. I had this suspicion as well, and unsurprisingly there is a rich if niche philosophical tradition that covers this synthesis. I recently finished Fichte's Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre in the recent translation by Daniel Breazeale, which is I think what you're looking for - a transcendental idealist system inspired by Kant infused with Spinozist tendencies towards pantheism. The scholar Dieter Henrich calls it the "Spinozism of Freedom," i.e. a system that proceeds like the Ethics (viz. the geometrical deductions), except based not from absolute determinism but from absolute freedom. The Wissenschaftslehre is more concerned with metaphysics and epistemology than ethics or religion, but there is a place in the system for both. Anyway, check out Fichte. He's a criminally underrated philosopher, partially because he was caught between Kant and Hegel in the timeline, partially because his style of writing is very off-putting to the amateur (but clear to anyone who puts in effort). Breazeale's translator introduction and Henrich's lectures on German idealism are also very good secondary literature on the topic.
Studying the history of philosophy is such a double edged sword, isn't it? You get the exhilirating feeling of thinking you might have unearthed something new, and then realize that someone else already thought of that centuries ago. Still, you get the gratification that somebody else did in fact have the same thought, so you at least haven't gone crazy along the way (yet).
Very true.