Lectures on Metaphysics

by Immanuel Kant, Karl P. Ameriks (Translator)

The purpose of the Cambridge Edition is to offer translations of the best modern German edition of Kant's work in a uniform format suitable for Kant scholars. This volume contains the first translation into English of notes from Kant's lectures on metaphysics. These lectures, dating from the 1760's to the 1790's, touch on all the major topics and phases of Kant's philosophy. Most of these notes have appeared only recently in the German Academy Edition and this translation offers many corrections of that edition.

Genres: Philosophy

696 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Immanuel 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.

Reviews

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are kind of crib notes based on the lectures but I found they were clear, concise and made sense.

[ROC · Rating 4 out of 5]

The thoroughness and exertion in Kant's work is astounding, and to see it develop into the post-critical period is near otherworldly. Reading the note variations really help to re-enforce the vast number of definitions and categories outlined in his Ontology and Cosmology [physica rationalis, psychologia rationalis]. It also serves as a nice refresher course for his Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals.

A word of warning, I walked into this having already read my fair share of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. I would have been lost if not acquainted with the basic understandings of substance and the varieties of epistemic and metaphysical modality.

Will certainly re-read.
Looking forward to tackling the COPR.

[Virginia · Rating 5 out of 5]

To be honest/clear, I only read until the end of the Metaphysik Mongrovius, but I'm adding it now because I'll finish it at some point (have to return it to the library before then though).

[Devon · Rating 3 out of 5]

i save this for the days i feel like i can really "pay attention"