The Cambridge Companion to Kant

by Paul Guyer

Overview

The fundamental task of philosophy since the seventeenth century has been to determine whether the essential principles of both knowledge and action can be discovered by human beings unaided by an external agency. No one philosopher contributed more to this enterprise than Kant, whose Critique of Pure Reason (1781) shook the very foundations of the intellectual world. Kant argued that the basic principles of the natural sciences are imposed on reality by human sensibility and understanding, and thus that human beings are also free to impose their own free and rational agency on the world. This volume is the only systematic and comprehensive account of the full range of Kant's writings available, and the first major overview of his work to be published in more than a dozen years. An internationally recognized team of Kant scholars explore Kant's conceptual revolution in epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of science, moral and political philosophy, aesthetics, and the philosophy of religion. The volume also traces the historical origins and consequences of Kant's work.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521367684
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	01/31/1992
Series:	Cambridge Companions to Philosophy
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	500
Sales rank:	1,143,503
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 9.02(h) x 1.18(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction: the starry heavens and the moral law Paul Guyer; 1. Kant's intellectual development: 1746–81 Frederick C. Beiser; 2. The transcendental aesthetic Charles Parsons; 3. Functions of thought and the synthesis of intuitions J. Michael Young; 4. The transcendental deduction of the categories Paul Guyer; 5. Causal laws and the foundations of natural science Michael Friedman; 6. Empirical, rational and transcendental psychology: psychology as science and as philosophy Gary Hatfield; 7. Reason and practice of science Thomas E. Wartenberg; 8. The critique of metaphysics: Kant and traditional ontology Karl Ameriks; 9. Vindicating reason Onora O'Neill; 10. Autonomy, obligation and virtue: an overview of Kant's moral philosophy J. B. Schneewind; 11. Politics, freedom and order: Kant's political philosophy Wolfgang Kersting; 12. Taste, sublimity and genius: the aesthetics of nature and art Eva Schaper; 13. Rational theology, moral faith and religion Allen W. Wood; 14. The first twenty years of critique: the Spinoza connection George di Gionvanni.

Editorial Reviews

"This collection of essays attests to the high degree of maturity, richness, and depth recently achieved by English-langage Kantian scholarship. This book will certainly increase the already extraordinary interest that the revival of Kantian studies has produced in the Anglo-American philosophical world—an interest that has helped to erase some of the barriers between the analytical and other approaches to philosophy. The collection not only substantially advances the critical discussion of Kant's philosophy, it also can be used as an invaluable pedagogical tool at the graduate seminar level...giv[ing] an almost complete picture of Kant's critical philosophy." Ethics

From the Publisher

After an excellent introduction by the editor, this volume consists of 14 essays by an international panel of Kant scholars, each dealing with a different element of Kant's thought and ranging over the entire body of his work. The essays are uniformly clear and well written, though some prior experience with Kant is necessary in order for them to be fully appreciated. The publisher is to be commended for the series, which will include studies of philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Hobbes, Nietzsche, Leibniz, and Spinoza. Recommended for all libraries supporting undergraduate programs in philosophy.-- Terry Skeats, Bishop's Univ ., Lennoxville, Quebec

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