The Philosophy of Kant

This is a smartly designed volume in the 100 volume German Library series. If you want to get into Kant start here. The volume gives you decent sized extracts from The Critique of Pure Reason; The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals; The Critique of Judgement and various smaller but significant pieces by Kant on universal history, peace and Englightenment. The translations are various. You can get a sense of the three critiques from the three long extracts (Metaphysics of Morals standing in for the second critique, The Critique of Practical Reason), which with Kant is the essential thing. How do these three critiques work together and compliment one another and together provide a philosophy? That's the question. And indeed, we are talking of a profoundly revolutionary philosophy which we have hardly begun to take seriously. So what I'm saying is, if you want to get going with Kant, this is I think the best volume to start with.

This is a fairly extensive set of excerpts from Kant's "moral and political writings" including his views on war (possibly Providence's way to improve humanity as a whole, despite Kant's antipathy to it), freedom & its relationship to politics & business, relationships between pure reason & empiricism, the nature of causation vs. empiricism, the price of dignity, universal laws ~ Jung's archetypes, reciprocal causation ~ Jung's synchronicity, etc. There are many quotable phrases such as: pp. 11-12: Men whose heads touch the heavens while their feet rest upon the lowly earth. pp. 21-2: True wisdom is the companion of simplicity. [Occam's Razor] p. 132: Enlightenment is man's leaving his self-caused immaturity. He also addresses knowledge & ideas: p. 40: In fact, this may pass as an infallible prophecy for all future time. Since, the human mind has speculated for so many centuries on countless subjects in so many ways, it is likely that for every new idea an old one can be found having some affinity with it. science: p. 263: Scientific knowledge, critically explored & systematically introduces is the narrow gateway which leads to wisdom. and morality: p. 465: Act in such a way that you could want your maxim to become a general law. Friedrich describes his treatment of the original texts in footnotes. However, the text includes numerous Latin phrases (mostly not included in my phrasebooks) which are not translated herein. Further, writing in the 2nd half of the 18th century, some of Kant's examples, assumptions, & value judgments are dated. His style is somewhat convoluted & difficult (possibly due to German translated into English); one of the excerpts is something of a Christian apologetic; others are utopian & IMHO naïve. Overall, it demonstrates the brilliance of Kant as an original thinker--a man ahead of his time, & possibly of ours too.