Constituting Critique: Kant's Writing as Critical Praxis

by Willi Goetschel, Eric J. Schwab (Translator)

Kant’s philosophy is often treated as a closed system, without reference to how it was written or how Kant arrived at its familiar form, the critique. In fact, the style of the critique seems so artless that readers think of it as an unfortunate by-product—a style of stylelessness. In Constituting Critique , Willi Goetschel shows how this apparent gracelessness was deliberately achieved by Kant through a series of writing experiments. By providing an account of the process that culminated in his three Critiques , this book offers a new perspective on Kant’s philosophical thought and practice.
Constituting Critique traces the stages in Kant’s development to reveal how he redefined philosophy as a critical task. Following the philosopher through the experiments of his early essays, Goetschel demonstrates how Kant tests, challenges, and transforms the philosophical essay in his pursuit of a new self-reflective literary genre. From these experiments, critique emerges as the philosophical form for the critical project of the Enlightenment. The imperatives of its transcendental style, Goetschel contends, not only constitute and inform the critical moment of Kant’s philosophical praxis, but also have an enduring place in post-Kantian philosophy and literature.
By situating the Critiques within the context of Kant’s early essays, this work will redirect the attention of Kant scholars to the origins of their form. It will also encourage contemporary critical theorists to reconsider their own practice through an engagement with its source in Kant.

256 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1994

Reviews

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

The spiciest Kant take - Kant was actually not a bad writer

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I had read this before attempting Kant for the first time, all those years ago. So many introductions to Kant attempt to give a full and coherent overview, but they cannot do justice to the justified complexity of Kant's thought. Willi Goetschel's text is not an introduction, but rather an overview from the perspective of philosophical writing style as a way to attempt to understand what Kant sought to to in each of his texts. Usefully, Goetschel proceeds in time, building up to the style of the critique itself. Looking to earlier texts, we see that it wasn't that Kant "couldn't write" but that the difficulty we have in processing the words he put down on the page is a manifestation of the hard work of the critique itself. He also works through various clusters of metaphors as found in the First Critique, teasing out their implications, illustrating that Kant's writing style was integral to a new way of thinking. Excellent.