Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason'
An Introduction

This book is an introductory textbook explaining the role of the first Critique in Kant's philosophy.

Jill Vance Buroker (Author)

9780521618250, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 6 October 2006

338 pages
21.3 x 13.7 x 2.3 cm, 0.39 kg

"...I certainly intend to assign this book in future courses on the Critique of Pure Reason, and I am confident that all other teachers of Kant will find their students deeply grateful if they do so as well." --Paul Guyer, University of Pennsylvania: Philosophy in Review

In this introductory textbook to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Jill Vance Buroker explains the role of this first Critique in Kant's Critical project and offers a line-by-line reading of the major arguments in the text. She situates Kant's views in relation both to his predecessors and to contemporary debates, explaining his Critical philosophy as a response to the failure of rationalism and the challenge of skepticism. Paying special attention to Kant's notoriously difficult vocabulary, she explains the strengths and weaknesses of his arguments, while leaving the final assessment up to the reader. Intended to be read alongside the Critique (also published by Cambridge University Press as part of The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant in Translation), this guide is accessible to readers with little background in the history of philosophy, but should also be a valuable resource for more advanced students.

1. Introduction to the critical project
2. The prefaces and the introduction
3. The transcendental aesthetic
4. The metaphysical deduction
5. The transcendental deduction
6. The schematism and the analytic of principles I
7. The analytic of principles II
8. Transcendental illusion I: rational psychology
9. Transcendental illusion II: rational cosmology
10. Transcendental illusion III: rational theology
11. Reason and the critical philosophy
Conclusion: Kant's transcendental idealism.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], Western philosophy: c 1600 to c 1900 [HPCD], History of Western philosophy [HPC]