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Guides for the Perplexed
Kant: A Guide for the Perplexed
Continuum's Guides for the Perplexed are clear, concise and accessible introductions to thinkers, writers and subjects that students and readers can find especially challenging. Concentrating specifically on what it is that makes the subject difficult to fathom, these books explain and explore key themes and ideas, guiding the reader towards a thorough understanding of demanding material. Immanuel Kant's influence and importance are difficult to exaggerate, his Three Critiques - of Pure Reason, of Practical Reason and of Judgment - standing as landmark works in the Western philosophical canon. Anyone interested in or studying philosophy will encounter Kant and hope to reach a detailed understanding of his work. Nevertheless, Kant is far from being an easy or straightforward subject for study. The ideas entailed in his work - and the connections between them - are complex, and the language in which they are expressed is frequently opaque. A Guide for the Perplexed is the ideal text for anyone finding it difficult to make headway with this key philosopher. It offers a detailed account of each of the three Critiques and the relationship between them. In so doing, it ranges over Kant's epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics and philosophy of religion, and explores his legacy for German Idealism. Valuably, the book provides a way through Kant's often impenetrable prose. Written with students in mind, and tailored to meet their specific needs, this is a reliable, authoritative and illuminating guide to one of the central pillars of modern philosophy.
- GenresPhilosophy
220 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
64 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 26, 2021
Seung’s guide to Kant is likely to disconcert the casual student or reader anticipating a nicely simplified summary of Kant’s work because it is critical and often caustic. Seung has a distinctive approach ( I have read him on Plato and Nietzsche) which is probably very tough to achieve and sets him at odds with a great many other writers; I wonder what academics make of him.
This is not an easy book to read; it is not possible to passively scan the pages and absorb their content without work. Early in the book, Seung sets out a glossary or lexicon of terms used by Kant and describes their meaning. After initially struggling with the ensuing analysis, I made this material into a table for my own reference and found it indispensable. A great deal later hangs on the precise definition of these terms.
Seung’s style is then to set about reading and analysing Kant’s work in the sequence of its original publication. No philosopher is likely to start out with a fully formed system and devote their career to writing it out in long hand. The career of a philosopher is far more likely to be one of learning and development, with progress over time as problems are confronted and (hopefully) overcome. A major part of this process will be interaction with others, both critical and supportive.
With this in mind, Seung makes special note of the way Kant changes his arguments over time and investigates the likely process leading Kant to make these changes. Kant does not usually acknowledge that he is changing, sometimes radically, does not always acknowledge the failings or defects which made change necessary and does not always give an honest or explicit explanation of his changes. Seung is often very cutting as he describes Kant’s sharp changes in direction, jettisoning major planks of his own system and leaving his contemporaries dumbfounded as they try to absorb the astonishing twists and turns with each new publication. In places, Seung accuses Kant of not just hypocrisy, but misrepresentation and deception, including making surreptitious moves that he has previously declared to be illegitimate and using his own technical terms inconsistently and indeed wrongly.
This is absolutely central to Seung’s contribution, because in his view (supported by examples naturally) too many Kant experts and apologists uphold or defend aspects of Kant’s work which Kant himself had abandoned and which were in any case unsustainable. This can lead them to devise elaborate and tortured schemes to rescue ideas that in Seung’s opinion are just flatly wrong.
The book does, I think, give a very coherent overview of Kant’s work and it does acknowledge in various places Kant’s positive influences on later thinkers, from Hegel to Rawls (for example). Some fascinating ideas emerge from this account. If it does encourage students to seek out the originals, however, it is more likely that they will want to read Plato than spend more time with Kant, because Kant repeatedly has to abandon his own defective ideas and borrow instead from Plato. Seung even writes at one point: “Rawls never recognized the ultimate source of inspiration for his own theory of justice. Thus he mistook himself for a Kantian because he never came around to appreciate the Platonic legacy in Kant’s normative theory, probably the only thing worth saving in his entire philosophy.” [p143]
This is not an easy book to read; it is not possible to passively scan the pages and absorb their content without work. Early in the book, Seung sets out a glossary or lexicon of terms used by Kant and describes their meaning. After initially struggling with the ensuing analysis, I made this material into a table for my own reference and found it indispensable. A great deal later hangs on the precise definition of these terms.
Seung’s style is then to set about reading and analysing Kant’s work in the sequence of its original publication. No philosopher is likely to start out with a fully formed system and devote their career to writing it out in long hand. The career of a philosopher is far more likely to be one of learning and development, with progress over time as problems are confronted and (hopefully) overcome. A major part of this process will be interaction with others, both critical and supportive.
With this in mind, Seung makes special note of the way Kant changes his arguments over time and investigates the likely process leading Kant to make these changes. Kant does not usually acknowledge that he is changing, sometimes radically, does not always acknowledge the failings or defects which made change necessary and does not always give an honest or explicit explanation of his changes. Seung is often very cutting as he describes Kant’s sharp changes in direction, jettisoning major planks of his own system and leaving his contemporaries dumbfounded as they try to absorb the astonishing twists and turns with each new publication. In places, Seung accuses Kant of not just hypocrisy, but misrepresentation and deception, including making surreptitious moves that he has previously declared to be illegitimate and using his own technical terms inconsistently and indeed wrongly.
This is absolutely central to Seung’s contribution, because in his view (supported by examples naturally) too many Kant experts and apologists uphold or defend aspects of Kant’s work which Kant himself had abandoned and which were in any case unsustainable. This can lead them to devise elaborate and tortured schemes to rescue ideas that in Seung’s opinion are just flatly wrong.
The book does, I think, give a very coherent overview of Kant’s work and it does acknowledge in various places Kant’s positive influences on later thinkers, from Hegel to Rawls (for example). Some fascinating ideas emerge from this account. If it does encourage students to seek out the originals, however, it is more likely that they will want to read Plato than spend more time with Kant, because Kant repeatedly has to abandon his own defective ideas and borrow instead from Plato. Seung even writes at one point: “Rawls never recognized the ultimate source of inspiration for his own theory of justice. Thus he mistook himself for a Kantian because he never came around to appreciate the Platonic legacy in Kant’s normative theory, probably the only thing worth saving in his entire philosophy.” [p143]
June 14, 2023
Seung did make Kant far more understandable than I had understood him before. I felt this book was not at an introductory level and would provide challenging to the novice reader. Nonetheless, Seung did adequately present Kant's views and critically assessed them. For the size of the book he was very thorough in his analysis.
August 2, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews