The writings of the illustrious sage of Königsberg, the founder of the Critical Philosophy, more than any other work, at once invigorated and disciplined my understanding. The originality, the depth, and the compression of the thoughts; the novelty and subtlety, yet solidity and importance of the distinctions; the adamantine chain of the logic, and, I will venture to add (paradox as it will appear to those who have taken their notion of Immanuel Kant from Reviewers and Frenchmen), the clearness and evidence of the Critique of Pure Reason … took possession of me with a giant's hand. (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, as quoted by H.J. Paton, Kant's Metaphysic of Experience)
In this course we shall pursue a close reading of as much of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason as possible, consistent with reading it carefully and critically.
The Critique is one of those rare texts that thoroughly and systematically reconfigured the philosophical landscape. The Critique was the tipping point between early modern Rationalism and Empiricism, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the "wild years" of Romanticism, German Idealism, Hegel, and nineteenth century European philosophy (as Safranski has called them). Kant reconceived most of the inherited problems of metaphysics and epistemology: realism v idealism; the nature of substance, causality, and the natural world; the constitution of mind and the mind-body problem; the problem of free will and determinism; skepticism and the foundation of human knowledge. Kant effects his philosophical revolution by means of a novel account of the human power of representation. He replaces the early modern Theory of Ideas inaugurated by Descartes with a radically new transcendental analysis of the mind's power to represent an objective world by deploying concepts to work up the data of the senses.
We will aim to come to terms with both Kant's "Copernican revolution" in philosophy (as he called it) and the details of his argumentation. To do this, I will begin each new topic by lecturing, which I expect to drift into discussion. Student interests will dictate the pace and precise focus of the course, to the extent consistent with not becoming bogged down early in the text and missing some of the juicy bits later.
We will use the Cambridge translation of the Critique by Guyer and Wood. It is more accurate than Kemp Smith's translation, although admittedly stylistically less elegant. I have ordered it in the bookstore, along with two recommended (but not required) secondary sources: Henry Allison's Kant's Transcendental Idealism (revised and enlarged ed.); and Guyer's Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy (which is something of an updated version of his original Campanion to Kant). Here are the bibliographic details:
- Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, ed. and trans. by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge UP, 1999). ISBN: 0521657297
- Henry Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism, revised and enlarged ed. (Yale UP, 2004). ISBN: 0300102666
- Paul Guyer, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy (Cambridge UP, 2006). ISBN: 0521529952
The secondary literature on the Critique is remarkably sophisticated, and so students will be expected to read and think about it. I will place the best examples of this literature on reserve in Lauinger, and this will serve as a starting point for student exploration.
Enrollment in Philosophy 501 is restricted to graduate students in the GU Philosophy Dept. All others require my permission. This course will be fairly high level, and so I will be reserved in giving such permission.