Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Usually, the history of philosophy in the first two decades after the publication of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason) in May 1781 is seen as little more than commentary upon and criticism of Kant's classic text. It is chiefly a story about how Kant's successors tried to defend and systematize, or criticize and dismember, his philosophy. The main theme of this story is the central outstanding problem of Kant's philosophy: the transcendental deduction, the problem of the possibility of empirical knowledge. The various approaches to this problem, their formation and demise, is essentially the history of the Kantian philosophy itself. Such, at any rate, is the picture that emerges from the solid studies of Karl Rosenkranz, Johannes Erdmann, Nicolai Hartmann, Josiah Royce, Richard Kroner, and Ernst Cassirer.There is much to be said for this approach. After 1788 Kant's philosophy was usually – though certainly not always – the centre of attention in German intellectual life. But it is worthwhile to consider that, before 1788, the Kritik seemed to suffer the same fate as Hume's Treatise: “to fall stillborn from the press.” It was only in 1786 that Kant's philosophy began to receive more attention due to the success of Reinhold's Briefe ueber die kantische Philosophie (Letters on the Kantian Philosophy), which popularized many of Kant's ideas. By 1788 Kant's philosophy ... log in or subscribe to read full text