Goodbye, Kant!
What Still Stands of the Critique of Pure Reason
Published on 1. November 2013
Book
Hardback
146 pages
978-1-4384-4809-1 (ISBN)
Description
A penetrating and freewheeling evaluation of Kant's magnum opus.
A best seller in Italy, Maurizio Ferraris's Goodbye, Kant! delivers a nontechnical, entertaining, and occasionally irreverent overview of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. He borrows his title from Wolfgang Becker's Goodbye Lenin!, the 2003 film about East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which depicts both relief at the passing of the Soviet era and affection for the ideals it embodied. Ferraris approaches Kant in similar spirits, demonstrating how the structure that Kant elaborates for the understanding of human knowledge can generate nostalgia for lost aspirations, while still leaving room for constructive criticism. Isolating key themes and concerns in the work, Ferraris evaluates Kant's claims relative to what science and philosophy have come to regard as the conditions for knowledge and experience in the intervening two centuries. He remains attentive to the historical context and ideals from which Kant's Critique emerged but also resolute in identifying what he sees as the limits and blind spots in the work. The result is an accessible account of a notoriously difficult book that will both provoke experts and introduce students to the work and to these important philosophical debates about the relations of experience to science.
A best seller in Italy, Maurizio Ferraris's Goodbye, Kant! delivers a nontechnical, entertaining, and occasionally irreverent overview of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. He borrows his title from Wolfgang Becker's Goodbye Lenin!, the 2003 film about East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which depicts both relief at the passing of the Soviet era and affection for the ideals it embodied. Ferraris approaches Kant in similar spirits, demonstrating how the structure that Kant elaborates for the understanding of human knowledge can generate nostalgia for lost aspirations, while still leaving room for constructive criticism. Isolating key themes and concerns in the work, Ferraris evaluates Kant's claims relative to what science and philosophy have come to regard as the conditions for knowledge and experience in the intervening two centuries. He remains attentive to the historical context and ideals from which Kant's Critique emerged but also resolute in identifying what he sees as the limits and blind spots in the work. The result is an accessible account of a notoriously difficult book that will both provoke experts and introduce students to the work and to these important philosophical debates about the relations of experience to science.
Reviews / Votes
"Goodbye, Kant! is an entertaining, irreverent summary and dismissal of Kant's arguments in Critique of Pure Reason." - Journal of Critical Realism"This short book provides an accessible account of a very difficult one, the Critique of Pure Reason, by far the most influential of Kant's works ... [it] provides food for thought for both experts and students." - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Albany, NY
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
US School Grade: College Graduate Student and over
Illustrations
8 Figures; 7 Tables, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
375 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4384-4809-1 (9781438448091)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
10/2013
1st Edition
De Gruyter
from
€76.99
Available for download
Persons
Maurizio Ferraris is Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Turin in Italy. His many books include Documentality: Why It Is Necessary to Leave Traces, also translated by Richard Davies. Richard Davies is Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Bergamo, Italy, and author of Descartes: Belief, Scepticism and Virtue.
Content
List of Figures
Introduction
1. Kant's revolution
Why start a revolution
The rationalists and the Library of Babel
The empiricists and Funes the Memorious
Refounding metaphysics by overturning the point of view
2. The basic claims
The scheme of the work
The metaphysics of experience
Five ontological theses
Two epistemological theses
Where to find them
3. What is inherited (Examination)
New wine in old bottles
Kant's metaphysics
The models of the Critique of Pure Reason
The naturalization of physics
Consequences
4. What is novel (Examination)
Kant and the platypus
Phenomenon and noumenon
Deduction, schematism, and imagination
The hundred thalers
Synthetic a priori judgments
Are synthetic a priori judgments possible?
Dogmas of empiricism and dogmas of transcendentalism
5. The Transcendental Fallacy (Examination)
A semi-catastrophe
The purloined letter
A mind-dependent world
An avoidable fallacy
6. Conceptual Schemes and Phenomena
Over-powerful spectacles
The Thesis of Conceptual Schemes
Are intuitions without concepts blind?
Are concepts without intuitions empty?
The Thesis of the Phenomena
7. Space and Time
What is the Transcendental Aesthetic?
Space
Time
The meaning of mathemathization
8. Self, Substance, and Cause
Self: The world as representations
Substance
Cause
9. Logical apparatus (Examination)
A complicated contrivance
First Gadget: Judgments and Categories (Metaphysical deduction)
Second Gadget: Deduction
Deduction A: Theory of knowledge
Deduction B: Transcendental psychology
Third Gadget: The Schematism
How a schema works: Kant's hints
How a schema works: A speculative hypothesis
The timeline
Why it doesn't work
Could it have worked?
Fourth Gadget: Principles
Afterword on reciprocal action
10. From phenomena to screwdrivers
The deduction of naturalization
The Critique of Practical Reason
The Critique of Judgment
11. Reckoning with the revolution
A spectre is haunting Europe
Matrix
Kant and Talleyrand
An Iroquois in Paris
From Kant to Kafka
Notes
Index
Introduction
1. Kant's revolution
Why start a revolution
The rationalists and the Library of Babel
The empiricists and Funes the Memorious
Refounding metaphysics by overturning the point of view
2. The basic claims
The scheme of the work
The metaphysics of experience
Five ontological theses
Two epistemological theses
Where to find them
3. What is inherited (Examination)
New wine in old bottles
Kant's metaphysics
The models of the Critique of Pure Reason
The naturalization of physics
Consequences
4. What is novel (Examination)
Kant and the platypus
Phenomenon and noumenon
Deduction, schematism, and imagination
The hundred thalers
Synthetic a priori judgments
Are synthetic a priori judgments possible?
Dogmas of empiricism and dogmas of transcendentalism
5. The Transcendental Fallacy (Examination)
A semi-catastrophe
The purloined letter
A mind-dependent world
An avoidable fallacy
6. Conceptual Schemes and Phenomena
Over-powerful spectacles
The Thesis of Conceptual Schemes
Are intuitions without concepts blind?
Are concepts without intuitions empty?
The Thesis of the Phenomena
7. Space and Time
What is the Transcendental Aesthetic?
Space
Time
The meaning of mathemathization
8. Self, Substance, and Cause
Self: The world as representations
Substance
Cause
9. Logical apparatus (Examination)
A complicated contrivance
First Gadget: Judgments and Categories (Metaphysical deduction)
Second Gadget: Deduction
Deduction A: Theory of knowledge
Deduction B: Transcendental psychology
Third Gadget: The Schematism
How a schema works: Kant's hints
How a schema works: A speculative hypothesis
The timeline
Why it doesn't work
Could it have worked?
Fourth Gadget: Principles
Afterword on reciprocal action
10. From phenomena to screwdrivers
The deduction of naturalization
The Critique of Practical Reason
The Critique of Judgment
11. Reckoning with the revolution
A spectre is haunting Europe
Matrix
Kant and Talleyrand
An Iroquois in Paris
From Kant to Kafka
Notes
Index