This volume offers English translations of texts that form the essential background to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Presenting the projects of Kant's predecessors and contemporaries in eighteenth-century Germany, it enables readers to understand the positions that Kant might have identified with "pure reason," the criticisms of pure reason that had developed prior to Kant's, and alternative attempts at synthesizing empiricist elements within a rationalist framework. The volume contains chapters on Christian Wolff, Martin Knutzen, Alexander Baumgarten, Christian Crusius, Leonhard Euler, Johann Lambert, Marcus Herz, Johann Eberhard, and Johann Tetens. Each chapter includes a brief introduction that provides succinct biographical and bibliographical information on these authors, a concise account of their projects, and information on the importance of these projects to Kant's first Critique. Extensive references to the first Critique, brought together in a concordance, highlight the potential relevance of each text.
Author: Eric Watkins Publisher: Cambridge University Press Published: 08/01/2009 Pages: 426 Binding Type: Hardcover Weight: 1.50lbs Size: 9.00h x 6.10w x 1.20d ISBN: 9780521781626
Review Citation(s): Choice 03/01/2010
About the Author Watkins, Eric: - Eric Watkins is professor of philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. The recipient of grants from the Fulbright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, he is the author of Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality, which won the Book Prize in 2005 from the Journal of the History of Philosophy.