Theoretical Philosophy, 1755-1770

by Immanuel Kant, Ralf Meerbote (Primary Contributor), David Walford (Editor)

The eleven essays in this volume constitute Kant's theoretical, pre-critical philosophical writings from 1755 to 1770. Several essays have never been translated into English before, while others have long been unavailable. The development of Kant's thought can be traced to the eventual emergence in 1770 of the two chief tenets of his mature philosophy: the subjectivity of space and time, and the phenomena-noumena distinction. Hb ISBN (1992): 0-521-39214-4

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

628 pages, Paperback

First published September 25, 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

[Erik · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume is useful for translations of the latin essays, but it omits the highly important 'Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces' which is coming in another volume called Natural Science, edited by Watkins which has not appeared as of 2011.

[Kate]

I read the essay "The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God". It turned out to be very low quality and incoherent, so I don't think I'll be reading the rest of his earlier works. To summarize: First he "disproves" Anselm's ontological argument by debunking an assertion that Anselm never actually made. Then he makes his own argument which he seems to think is new, but is actually only a less coherent rehash of Aquinas. Then he moves on to the argument from design--but not arguing that organisms seem functional, therefore they're designed. Oh no, he argues that things like air--since some of their physical properties occasionally (but not always) allow some organisms (but not all) to survive in them--exhibit a tendency to order/harmony and thus a posteriori demonstrate the need for some ultimate grounds for said order/harmony. This is so obviously ridiculous that I just gave up on him and this point.

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read: Physical Monadology, False Subtlety, Negative Magnitudes, Directions in Space, Inaugural Dissertation.
Going back for the rest soon.