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Theoretical Philosophy after 1781
This volume is the first to assemble the writings that Kant published to popularize, summarize, amplify and defend the doctrines of his masterwork, the 1781 Critique of Pure Reason. The Prolegomena is often recommended to students, but the other texts are also important representatives of Kant's intellectual development. The series includes copious linguistic notes and a glossary of key terms. The editorial introductions and explanatory notes reveal much about the critical reception given Kant by the metaphysicians of his day as well as his own efforts to derail his opponents.
548 pages, Hardcover
Published May 20, 2002
About the author
Immanuel Kant
3,118 books4,450 followersImmanuel Kant was an 18th-century philosopher from Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). He's regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of modern Europe & of the late Enlightenment. His most important work is The Critique of Pure Reason, an investigation of reason itself. It encompasses an attack on traditional metaphysics & epistemology, & highlights his own contribution to these areas. Other main works of his maturity are The Critique of Practical Reason, which is about ethics, & The Critique of Judgment, about esthetics & teleology.
Pursuing metaphysics involves asking questions about the ultimate nature of reality. Kant suggested that metaphysics can be reformed thru epistemology. He suggested that by understanding the sources & limits of human knowledge we can ask fruitful metaphysical questions. He asked if an object can be known to have certain properties prior to the experience of that object. He concluded that all objects that the mind can think about must conform to its manner of thought. Therefore if the mind can think only in terms of causality–which he concluded that it does–then we can know prior to experiencing them that all objects we experience must either be a cause or an effect. However, it follows from this that it's possible that there are objects of such a nature that the mind cannot think of them, & so the principle of causality, for instance, cannot be applied outside experience: hence we cannot know, for example, whether the world always existed or if it had a cause. So the grand questions of speculative metaphysics are off limits, but the sciences are firmly grounded in laws of the mind. Kant believed himself to be creating a compromise between the empiricists & the rationalists. The empiricists believed that knowledge is acquired thru experience alone, but the rationalists maintained that such knowledge is open to Cartesian doubt and that reason alone provides us with knowledge. Kant argues, however, that using reason without applying it to experience will only lead to illusions, while experience will be purely subjective without first being subsumed under pure reason. Kant’s thought was very influential in Germany during his lifetime, moving philosophy beyond the debate between the rationalists & empiricists. The philosophers Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer saw themselves as correcting and expanding Kant's system, thus bringing about various forms of German Idealism. Kant continues to be a major influence on philosophy to this day, influencing both Analytic and Continental philosophy.
Pursuing metaphysics involves asking questions about the ultimate nature of reality. Kant suggested that metaphysics can be reformed thru epistemology. He suggested that by understanding the sources & limits of human knowledge we can ask fruitful metaphysical questions. He asked if an object can be known to have certain properties prior to the experience of that object. He concluded that all objects that the mind can think about must conform to its manner of thought. Therefore if the mind can think only in terms of causality–which he concluded that it does–then we can know prior to experiencing them that all objects we experience must either be a cause or an effect. However, it follows from this that it's possible that there are objects of such a nature that the mind cannot think of them, & so the principle of causality, for instance, cannot be applied outside experience: hence we cannot know, for example, whether the world always existed or if it had a cause. So the grand questions of speculative metaphysics are off limits, but the sciences are firmly grounded in laws of the mind. Kant believed himself to be creating a compromise between the empiricists & the rationalists. The empiricists believed that knowledge is acquired thru experience alone, but the rationalists maintained that such knowledge is open to Cartesian doubt and that reason alone provides us with knowledge. Kant argues, however, that using reason without applying it to experience will only lead to illusions, while experience will be purely subjective without first being subsumed under pure reason. Kant’s thought was very influential in Germany during his lifetime, moving philosophy beyond the debate between the rationalists & empiricists. The philosophers Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer saw themselves as correcting and expanding Kant's system, thus bringing about various forms of German Idealism. Kant continues to be a major influence on philosophy to this day, influencing both Analytic and Continental philosophy.
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April 16, 2023
Contains the prolegomena, metaphysical foundations of natural science. Books I have read separately in other areas. The prolegomena is a great summary of Kant's main ideas and contributions to metaphysics in his critique of pure reason. The metaphysical foundations is quite abstruse, but also revealing. And the criticism of a critique of his philosophy was revealing of a side of his character we don't normally see, and particularly the short part on Leibniz at the end of it was interesting.
The last piece about advances in metaphysics since Leibniz and Wolff, mostly just restates his own critical philosophy and does not really give any specific insights or direct comparisons between his view and Leibniz. The characterisation in particular of all this previous rational philosophy as dogmatic, and the empiricist as sceptical, and his philosophy as critical, is a very simplistic assessment to my mind, and has an "imperial" positivist feel about it, perhaps positivism likers may latch on to this aspect of Kants philosophy, but for me I would see it as a weakness.
His critical philosophy, for me, adds something mostly by emphasising the importance of the subject in ascribing categories on to reality, not just passively sitting there and understanding reality presented to him. But, where he makes simplistic distinctions between synthetic/analytic and sees his philosophy as the final stage in metaphysics, in these areas he is indeed a bit more like a positivist, and his ideas there fall just as the positivists ideas did in the light of the criticisms of Quine and others. But of course, also they fall in regard specifically to the synthetic a priori, based on general relativity and non-euclidean geometries.
The last piece about advances in metaphysics since Leibniz and Wolff, mostly just restates his own critical philosophy and does not really give any specific insights or direct comparisons between his view and Leibniz. The characterisation in particular of all this previous rational philosophy as dogmatic, and the empiricist as sceptical, and his philosophy as critical, is a very simplistic assessment to my mind, and has an "imperial" positivist feel about it, perhaps positivism likers may latch on to this aspect of Kants philosophy, but for me I would see it as a weakness.
His critical philosophy, for me, adds something mostly by emphasising the importance of the subject in ascribing categories on to reality, not just passively sitting there and understanding reality presented to him. But, where he makes simplistic distinctions between synthetic/analytic and sees his philosophy as the final stage in metaphysics, in these areas he is indeed a bit more like a positivist, and his ideas there fall just as the positivists ideas did in the light of the criticisms of Quine and others. But of course, also they fall in regard specifically to the synthetic a priori, based on general relativity and non-euclidean geometries.
Displaying 1 of 1 review