Introducing Kant

Introducing Graphic Guides

by Chris Want, Andrzej Klimowski (Contributor)

Immanuel Kant, pre-eminent philosopher of the Enlightenment laid the foundation of modern Western thought.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Biography, Comics, History, Graphic Novels

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[BookHunter M ُH َM َD · Rating 2 out of 5]

رغم ان الكتاب يبدو بسيطا برسومه الكاريكاتوريه و بساطة اسلوبه الا انه يفتقر الى الوضوح.

لا أدرى اهى الترجمة ام حصيلتى الفلسفية التي كانت لا تليق بمبتدأ حينما قرأت هذا الكتاب.

لا أدعى أن الكتاب أضاف لى جديدا فى فهم فلسفة كانط الا قليل من التفاصيل المبعثره غير المفيده فى صورتها الحاليه.

[Riku Sayuj · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Visual Guide To The Tour:

 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 

[Amira Mahmoud · Rating 3 out of 5]

كنت أحضر إحدى المناظرات التي تستخدم البراهين الفلسفية والعقلية في إثبات وجود إله من عدمه
رشح أحد المتناظرين كتاب "نقد العقل المحض" لكانط، كنت أنوي قراءته من حينها
لكن بعد قراءتي لهذا الكتاب -والذي رغم سهولة السلسلة المعهودة- جاء صعب بعض الشيء
أظن أنني سأؤجل قراءة نقد كانط، واقرأ عن كانط نفسه أكثر.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is it good for what it is? Not necessarily. Is it as good as it can be considering what it tries to be? Quite possibly. One must be realistic with such books. Often a nearly impenetrable philosophy boils down only to a nearly impenetrable précis of a nearly impenetrable philosophy. It seems the ‘Introducing’ series has proven that no amount of booby drawings can change this.

Flying right toward the heart of things can eschew a vital context in much the same way as spurning the bridge to experience for an overindulgence in the purely theoretical. Throw in the all too predictable biographic eccentricities and/or vices and such introductions can easily become the path of least resistance to an “informed” dismissal.

The position I try to maintain through such readings involves employing these biographical eccentricities to know the subject is human, employing the subject’s doubt or, more often, over-certainty concerning their work, to know the work is not the least bit infallible, all the while preserving the fact that the fact that the subject has shouldered their way into my reading attention counts more toward casting a further, more thorough investigation worthy, than any such introduction can count toward casting it unworthy.

What about Kant? He drank plenty of wine, felt the guilt of a bed-wetter every time he perspired, and he marks both the prologue and epilogue to modernity. What more do you need to know?

My expectation of the ‘more thorough’ investigation off in the offing is that there will be plenty to both agree and disagree with. I sometimes get the impression that his posterity has used Kant as many use the bible, looking past the volume with which they disagree to cherrypick the fraction with which they agree.

“concepts have reference to sensible experience, but they are never, in a logical sense, deducible from them. For this reason I have never been able to understand the quest of the a priori in the Kantian sense. In any ontological question our concern can only be to seek out those characteristics in the complex of sense experience.” –Albert Einstein

[Alastair · Rating 2 out of 5]

I cannot decide what this book wants to be. The format - a "witty graphic guide" (from the blurb) suggests a light, high-level overview of Kant for the uninitiated; but the level of detail, coupled with the brief so extremely dense text, indicates an intended audience of proficient Kant readers. I think this fundamentally stops the book being successful in either regard.

As a book for lay readers the book fails: there is far too much jargon and too little 'setting out the shop' to give the uninitiated any chance in grappling with Kant's notoriously challenging thought. Near the beginning of the book, for example, the authors set out Kant's critical project: "Kant determined his philosophical project as a criticism of reason itself ... the utility of such a critique 'ought properly to be only negative'. By means of 'negative criticism', Kant aimed to expunge any fantasy that knowledge can be self-identical or present to itself.". I defy anyone with only a passing interest in philosophy to understand this. To be fair, the authors do point to a description of the concepts of presence / absence later in the book but I did not find these much use. Furthermore, as someone with a moderate grasp of Kant, I'm not convinced the ideas of presence / absence are critical to a first-order understanding and serve only to confuse matters here.

That leaves the possibility that the book is aimed at more experienced Kant devotees. But the book seems to fall down here too. I find some of the focus misplaced (as with the fixation on presence / absence). Other choices perplexed me: I cannot understand why the distinction of noumenon / phenomenon is not introduced till late in the book despite its importance, particularly for later critics of Kant. I think the authors misuse the term 'transcendental' unhelpfully throughout the start of the book. While transcendent and transcendental are used interchangeably by many authors, the latter is of fundamental importance to Kant - as the framing conditions of experience. These sit at the juncture between the empirical and the transcendent (beyond experience). I think the book does a very poor job either introducing the notion of the transcendental (to my admittedly inexpert eye) or of using it consistently.

As someone with a modicum of Kant experience - having read but not studied in detail the first two critiques - I at first glance thought this work would offer a great mid-level primer on the philosopher. Unfortunately, rather than an enjoyable moderate-difficulty book on Kant, this work couldn't make up its mind and ends up alienating all readers. For the beginner, the book is simply too advanced to be intelligible; for the enterprising amateur, the book engages at times too little and at times too much with certain features of Kant but elucidates none of them well; and for the expert I imagine this book will possibly be considered plain wrong in places, and certainly will not engage Kant on a critical-academic level sufficiently to be of interest. The concept was good, but overall this is a missed opportunity.

[Beth Shapeero · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this bitesize Introduction to Kant quite difficult to take in. I actually think it would be easier to comprehend some of Kant's ideas by simply reading Kant. Some concepts were quite poorly explained - the language was certainly difficult for a beginner level.

[Rory Bergin · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was left disappointed by this, it tries to cover too much ground and leaves the reader, at least this reader, floundering. Every page needed another page of explanation. Perhaps for philosophy students this is the right level, but too many complex ideas with too little explanation for me.

[Anil Swarup · Rating 2 out of 5]

This could have been a much better guide to understanding the complex philosophy of this great thinker. Despite elaborate use of graphics, the author confuses the reader. At the end of the book, you hardly get a clearer or better insight into what Kant had to say. Lot many pages are also wasted on other thinkers without relating their thought process with that of Kant.

[Steph De Mel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I appreciate that Kant is a difficult thinker to discuss, particularly at an introductory level, but this "Graphic Guide" completely misses the mark, in my opinion. Despite having studied and read Kant in the past, I found large chunks of this "introduction" vague and impenetrable, and the illustrations aren't particularly effective at supplementing the text. Some of the biographical detail is amusing, but the majority of this narrative failed to engage my attention. If you're looking for an introduction to Kant, I'd recommend trying Roger Scruton's "Kant: a Very Short Introduction", which I found rather more illuminating and interesting than this one.

[Jamal Alqale]

قرأت منه خمسين صفحة ولم أفهم منه شيئاً ، إبهام وكثرة استعمال المصطلحات بغير تعريفها ، ربما الترجمة لعبت دوراً في عدم إيصال الرسالة بالشكل المطلوب .
من يريد التعرف على كانط فليفتح كتاب قصة الفلسفة الحديثة لزكي نجيب محفوظ ، ويتوجه إلى الجزء الذي يتحدث عن كانط .

[Sabrina · Rating 1 out of 5]

I couldn't finish the whole thing. It felt like the sentences weren't making sense and I found it boring.

[Niels · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't think the authors did a good job at making Kant's philosophy clearer. But maybe that's just me. (Or maybe it's just Kant!)

[Castles · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not sure if it’s me or the book, but I didn’t understand so much from it.

[Amjad Fayoumi · Rating 2 out of 5]

هذا الكتاب رقم ٤٣٠ في سلسلة المشروع الضخم و المهم : المشروع القومي للترجمة و صدر في ٢٠٠٢
رغم أن الكتاب من ترجمة أهم مترجمي كتب الفلسفة في العالم العربي الاستاذ امام عبد الفتاح إمام الا ان اللغة غير واضحة ، هو كانط
صعب بطبيعته والترجمة زادت صعوبته.
إضافة إلى أخطاء غير مفهومة مثل كلمة Seminar
تم ترجمتها الى سينما
بالطبع يمكن الخروج بمعلومات عن كانط ولكن تبدو أفكاره كالغاز ، الكتاب لم يستطيع تقديم افكار كانط مبسطة بل يعقد افكاره ،لا انصح به، بل الافضل القراءة عن كانط من خلال قصة الفلسفة لويل ديورانت أو من خلال حكمة الغرب برتراند راسل
من الأفكار الجيدة في الكتاب أن مشروع كانط النقدي قام على ثلاثة مفاهيم الفهم وعبر عنه في كتابه نقد العقل المحض والرغبة الذي عبر عنه في كتاب نقد العقل العملي و الشعور الذي عبر عنه في كتاب نقد ملكة الحكم و ايضا يشير الكتاب الى نقد كانط لديكارت في مقولته أنا افكر اذن انا موجود و ايضا اشارته الى مقال كانط المهم ما التنوير و ايضا تأثير كانط و نقده من الفلاسفة اللاحقين مثل نيتشه الذي اعتبره ثعلبا مسيحيا يريد ان ينقذ المسيحية عبر شنق اللاهوت و إبعاده عن مجال الفلسفة و ايضا فوكو و هيجيل و هيدجر و دريدا و ليوتارد

[Leonardo · Rating 2 out of 5]

No aprendí nada. No termino de entender si Kant era tonto, fue hace tanto que no tiene sentido hablar de eso ahora, o si me lo explicaron mal. Para colmo me aburrió.

Tiene dos estrellas y no una porque quiero reservar la posibilidad de darle solo una estrella a los libros que odio (por ejemplo este). "Kant para Principiantes" simplemente no me gustó. Además banco mucho la cuestión esta de los libros para principiantes porque no puedo leer todo, y quiero ir haciendo síntesis, quiero poder unificar ideas en la cabeza entonces me parece que estos libros me dan más margen que ponerme a leer "La crítica de la Razón Pura" lo cuál debe ser una tortura considerable.

[Afkham · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a plenary introduction to Kant whom has got an important role in the history of philosophy. However, the multiplicity of his ideas and theories has made the book kind of bewildering for a beginner (or maybe it was a translating problem).
I was intrigued by his metaphysical concepts; the way he knocked down all the old beliefs and included reasoning in every aspect of his notions. I will certainly start to read his books!

[Mirta Stamenić · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't know whether I should even put it as a book i read since after about a third I stopped actually taking in anything I read, but I have to say that for a book that's supposed to simplify a difficult topic, it's a complete miss.

[Craig Langon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Trying to condense down such complicated material was never going to be an easy task. This title is the densest of the range that I have read. And yet, it might not satisfy the beginner or the more experienced fan of Kant. Probably good for quick easy reference but not much else.

[Shane]

I didn't finish this - too hard!

[Ala'a Almushaikeh]

كنت فضوليّة فيما يتعلق بفلسفة كانط ،
أعتقد إن الكتاب جيّد للغاية و وضّح لي القدر الذي أريد معرفته

even though i'm not quite sure i understand everything i read :D

[Thieluar]

If you just want to skip

[doaa sh · Rating 5 out of 5]

مبسطة جدا بطريقة شاملة و سهلة ومفيدة

[Bernie Gourley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume is part of a large series of guides that are put out by Icon Books with the goal of providing concise overviews on various topics. In this case, said topic is the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Kant was an eighteenth-century Prussian philosopher who greatly influenced modern and post-modern philosophy. Among the ideas that Kant shaped and influenced were skepticism, morality based in reason, and the need for an understanding of knowledge that was neither purely empiricist nor purely rationalist (but which acknowledged the strengths and limitations of each.)

The book largely follows a chronological approach in presenting Kant’s ideas as he came up with, and published, them. Along the way, there are sections that are biographical rather than being focused on the philosophical ideas. These sections are largely in the beginning, middle, and end as they discuss the philosopher’s entry into the field, the changes in the midst of his career, and the end of his life. I thought it was useful to gain a bit of insight into the man as a man (rather than just as a philosopher) because it helps one understand the nature of the mind that came up with those ideas. That said, if there were space constraints, I would have preferred more examples and narrative explanation of the ideas – which are intensely definitional and abstract, making them both dry and less effective than they could be – over that biographical information (much of which boils down to Kant being quirky and peculiar.) The bulk of the book follows the flow of ideas contained in the three publications that were the colonnade that undergirded Kant’s philosophy (“Critique of Pure Reason,” “Critique of Practical Reason,” and “Critique of Judgement.”)

Between the last biographical section and the book’s conclusion, there is a nice section that discusses Kant’s influence on other philosophers, including: Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Lyotard, and Derrida. When I say “influence” I’m not just talking about those who paid homage to Kant, but also those who critiqued his work and advanced the discipline by way of critiquing Kant.

As the subtitle suggests, graphics are used throughout. The graphics are black-and-white and are a mix of diagrams and cartoon drawings. I thought the drawings were well-rendered, but weren’t necessarily arranged to gain the most explanatory power. As with other books in the series, many of these are cartoons that merely restate ideas from the text. Other graphics are diagrams that arrange ideas in a way that I’m sure made sense to whomever was putting them together, but whose immediate explanatory value (if any) was not always readily apparent to me. I have no way of knowing whether this was purely the illustrator, or (more likely) a collaboration between author, illustrator, and editor.

This is an okay overview of the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. I’d describe it as accurate but not as clear or interesting as I’d wish it to be. I will admit that if it hadn’t been available without extra cost via Amazon Prime, I probably would have obtained a different guide. There is loads of competition in this concise guide market (e.g. “Kant: A Very Short Introduction” by Oxford University Press.) You might benefit from shopping around a bit.

[Bruce Holmstrom · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this short book quite hard to digest. The writing was almost as dense and jargon-filled as Kant’s itself and I must admit I didn’t get much out of reading it. You run into a lot of passages like this:

“The function of the faculty of reason is both to submit, and to give itself to, understanding. By virtue of reason’s operations, understanding obtains the right to legislate over the faculties of imagination and reason. Hence, legislation (by understanding) and the affirmation of judgment (also by understanding) are both forms of realizing reason’s gift to itself”.

Umm....ok.

I did enjoy a lot of the drawings. They were often kind of amusing. For the most part, though, they didn’t actually shed much light on Kant’s ideas.

Maybe Kant’s ideas are just too abstruse to be rendered graphically in any simple way, and the whole project of a succinct “Graphic Guide” to Kant is impossible from the start.

Granted, I’m not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. Many people might learn a lot from this book, so give it a shot if you feel like it. Otherwise save the time and the ten bucks and look elsewhere.

[Mikey · Rating 5 out of 5]

LITERATURE in PUNK ROCK - Book #49-52
--------------
SONG: Schopenhauer in Berlin by Emperor X (2017)
https://youtu.be/BAMMqUa3EEs
BOOKS:
- Kant: Very Short Introduction (Oxford)
- Introducing Kant: A Graphic Guide
- Schopenhauer: Very Short Introduction (Oxford)
- The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (Magee)
--------------
“Schopenhauer in Berlin” is the third track of 2017 Emperor X album “Oversleepers International.”
Emperor X is the pseudonym for the music of Chad Mattheny, a legally blind musician, Plan-it-X recording artist, whom worked as high school physics teacher before leaving to pursue music.
Per Stereogum Review:
It’s pithy and breathless, placing the German philosopher in a variety of modern contexts, drawing a connection between his suppressed will and today’s world: “It’s a sign of the times that we’re in that we’re thinking along the same line he did,” Matheny sings in the opening verse.

[Prakash Yadav · Rating 3 out of 5]

A metaphysical what-the-funk-did-I-just-read ... I am too young for this 'Kritik der Urteilskraft' and whatever condiments go with it :-/
Kant's Prussian fingers lather readers' mind with awesome philosophical soap and some is bound to get in readers' eyes ... but Kant is much more than a wise man of ethics and morals, his scientific works are admirable and once again gives me reason to believe that philosophy and science go hand in pant with with each other.
Illustrations are not the strong point of these series so don't expect too much, the content of the book is not really meant for graphic illustrations either. Only the whimsical pretenders are seen with a graphic guide to philosophy, I will be darned if the purty-girl-with-ripped-jeans beside whom i read this in the flight was not impressed ... you "kant" say i didn't try :-P

[Jeffrey N. Hora · Rating 2 out of 5]

Continuing a several year project of philosophic study, I looked to the Graphic Guide as a handy tool to give me a high-view of the life and particular work of Kant. Many of the previous Graphic Guides I have read have been helpful. This one, not so much....

Kant is, as I understand his work, highly theoretical and conceptual. I was looking for the Guide to help me work past those initial barriers and get a grip on his thought, providing me with a better place to stand when moving on to deeper reading of both Kant and understanding his impact and influence on subsequent philosophers. I did not find that to be the case with this Guide.

Kul-Want provided little clarity for me in understanding the concepts that Kant presents. I will be looking for other works for that helpful presentation.

[Owen M. McKinney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kant do for the masses!

I would recommend this book for someone who has more than a nodding acquaintance with philosophy in general. There are points where this introduction gets "heavy." To read Kant is to struggle, but it's worth the effort. There is a "for further reading" section worth consideration. It recommends books to read before reading Kant, recommended editions of Kant's three Critiques, reference books on Kant's ideas, and books for further reading. If you are prepared to read Kant, you need this inexpensive guide.

[أحلام جحاف · Rating 2 out of 5]

"في مطلع التسعينات وصلت أفكار كانط إلى الصدام مع حالة السلطات. وكان كانط قد مهد لمجيء هذه الحادثة بمقال في عام 1784 نُشر في مجلة برلين الشهرية عنوانه ما التنوير؟
وكان استجابة لسؤال من محرر المجلة:
وفي هذا المقال يُعرف كانط التنوير بأنه خروج أو مخرج لكن ذلك يتصوره بطريقة سلبية على أنه الرفض المتواصل لأشكال السلطة، في حين أن التنوير يحمل نصيحة نبيلة على شكل شعار لكنه مجازي، وهو:
تشجع وإعرف!
فلتكن لديك الشجاعة لتعرف عقلك الخاص!
وهذا عكس وضع البشرية في حالة عدم النضج حيث كانت التوصية، التي تقال " لا تفكر ، فقط اتبعةالأوامر!"

[Andrew Corsini · Rating 3 out of 5]

I struggled to wrap my head around a lot of this, I'll admit. What I attached to the most were the depictions of Kant as a lonely and quite weird individual, insisting his house be heated at certain temperatures, haunted by bad dreams in old age. That was far more interesting to me personally than his ideas about the world. If any, my guy Friedrick Niechzte had the best take on Kant at the end when he describes him as a "cunning fox who, having broken out the cage, somehow finds a way back into it".