A Companion to Kant

This Companion provides an authoritative survey of the whole range of Kant’s work, giving readers an idea of its immense scope, its extraordinary achievement, and its continuing ability to generate philosophical interest.

• Written by an international cast of scholars
• Covers all the major works of the critical philosophy, as well as the pre-critical works
• Subjects covered range from mathematics and philosophy of science, through epistemology and metaphysics, to moral and political philosophy
  

Notes on Contributors viii

Acknowledgments xii

References to Kant’s Works xiii

General Introduction 1
Graham Bird

1 Kant’s Life and Works 10
Allen W. Wood

Part I: Pre-Critical Issues 31

2 Kant’s Early Dynamics 33
Martin Schönfeld

3 Kant’s Early Cosmology 47
Martin Schönfeld

4 Kant’s Laboratory of Ideas in the 1770s 63
Alison Laywine

5 Kant’s Debt to Leibniz 79
Predrag Cicovacki

6 Kant’s Debt to the British Empiricists 93
Wayne Waxman

Part II: Critique of Pure Reason 109

7 Kant’s Transcendental Idealism 111
Henry E. Allison

8 Kant’s Analytic Apparatus 125
Graham Bird

9 Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic 140
Lorne Falkenstein

10 Kant’s Metaphysical and Transcendental Deductions 154
Derk Pereboom

11 The Second Analogy 169
Arthur Melnick

12 Kant’s Refutation of Problematic Idealism: Kantian Arguments and Kant’s Arguments against Skepticism 182
Wolfgang Carl

13 The Logic of Illusion and the Antinomies 192
Michelle Grier

14 The Critique of Rational Psychology 207
Udo Thiel

15 Kant’s Philosophy of Mathematics 222
Gordon Brittan

16 Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science 236
Michael Friedman

Part III: The Moral Philosophy: Pure and Applied 249

Introduction 251
Graham Bird

17 The Primacy of Practical Reason 259
Sebastian Gardner

18 Kant’s Critical Account of Freedom 275
Andrews Reath

19 Kant’s Formulations of the Moral Law 291
Allen W. Wood

20 Deriving the Formula of Universal Law 308
Samuel J. Kerstein

21 Moral Motivation in Kant 322
Philip Stratton-Lake

22 Moral Paragons and the Metaphysics of Morals 335
Marcia Baron

23 Applying Kant’s Ethics: The Role of Anthropology 350
Robert B. Louden

24 Liberty, Equality, and Independence: Core Concepts in Kant’s Political Philosophy 364
Howard Williams

25 Reason and Nature: Kant’s Teleological Argument in Perpetual Peace 383
Katrin Flikschuh

Part IV: The Critique of the Power of Judgment 397

Introduction 399
Graham Bird

26 The Demands of Systematicity: Rational Judgment and the Structure of Nature 408
Paul Abela

27 Bridging the Gulf: Kant’s Project in the Third Critique 423
Paul Guyer

28 Kant’s Aesthetic Theory 441
Anthony Savile

29 Kant’s Biological Teleology and its Philosophical Significance 455
Hannah Ginsborg

Part V: Kant’s Influence 471

30 Hegel’s Critique of Kant: An Overview 473
Sally Sedgwick

31 The Neglected Alternative: Trendelenburg, Fischer, and Kant 486
Graham Bird

32 Phenomenological Interpretations of Kant in Husserl and Heidegger 500
Paul Gorner

33 Conceptual Connections: Kant and the Twentieth-Century Analytic Tradition 513
James O’Shea

Index 527

“A Companion to Kant is the most recent (2010) and by far the best anthology on Kant's works. In it, Graham Bird brings together a remarkable set of essays by prominent scholars in Kant studies … .Many (if not most) essays … offer significant contributions to Kant scholarship. The2010Companion to Kant is bound to become indispensible for those who teach and for those who study Kant's philosophy (on both graduate and undergraduate levels). Its contributions remain lucid without watering Kant down; they are comprehensive without staying merely on the surface of the issues they discuss; they contain original work on Kant without skewing the interpretations of Kant toward one-sidedness; and jointly they thematically expand our knowledge and out understanding of Kant's corpus and of Kant's place within the intellectual tradition of Western philosophy.” (Metapsychology, June 2010)

“This collection is what one hopes for in a ‘companion’ volume. It contains 33 essays by prominent scholars, all of whom have made substantial contributions to Kant studies. Given the essays’ brevity…they manage to achieve surprising depth, and they will help any advanced student to get oriented in Kant’s thought.” (Choice)

Graham Bird is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Manchester, and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool. He has been a leading Kant scholar for nearly 40 years, and is the author of Kant’s Theory of Knowledge (1962), Philosophical Tasks (1972), and William James (1986), and Revolutionary Kant: A Commentary on the Critique of Pure Reason (2006). He is a past president of the Aristotelian Society and Chair of the UK Kant Society. This Companion provides an authoritative survey of the whole range of Kant’s work, giving readers an idea of its immense scope, its extraordinary achievement, and its continuing ability to generate philosophical interest. Written by an international cast of scholars, it covers all aspects of Kant’s philosophy and discusses all the major works of the critical philosophy, as well as the pre-Critical works.

The Companion comprises a series of concise guides to key topics in Kant’s philosophy. Some of the essays offer lucid explanations of Kant’s claims, while others take up his other contributions in issues such as history, philosophy, science, morality, aesthetics, and social-politics. This volume offers anyone with an interest in philosophy an indispensable collection of work on Kant.