The Arguments of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

Reviews / Votes

There are now several first-rate secondary texts on Kant's first Critique available, including Gardner's Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason and Altman's Companion to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. But Bryan Hall's The Arguments of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is not only every bit as excellent as these other texts, it is unique. It is a secondary text that carefully, critically, and specifically addresses, step-by-step, the arguments that Kant uses in the Critique of Pure Reason, and I think that it will be most gratefully welcomed and constantly used by generations of undergraduate philosophers and beginning graduate student philosophers to come. This is a book not only written for undergraduate students of the Critique of Pure Reason, but also in part by them. The appendix, 'Advice for the Student Reader,' written by Hall's undergraduate co-authors, is particularly engaging and helpful. I will most certainly assign this book as required reading for all my Kant courses. -- Robert Hanna, University of Colorado at Boulder In this book, Hall focuses on clarifying those main arguments in the Critique of Pure Reason that no undergraduate instructor can afford to ignore. The short, clearly written, chapters in the Arguments will do more to engage students than the recent, longer guidebooks and companions I have read. Reading Arguments has helped me better organize the lecture notes for my history of modern philosophy course and the seminar on Critique of Pure Reason. -- Seung-Kee Lee, Drew University The book encourages students to understand Kant's reasoning in the Critique of Pure Reason in terms of validly reconstructed arguments. This is useful in several respects. First, the reconstructed arguments at the end of each section provide a good and succinct summary of the relevant sections of the Critique of Pure Reason. Second, the reconstructed arguments help students to read Kant's writing more closely since they will question whether the reconstructed arguments do indeed correspond to Kant's reasoning. Finally, the book demonstrates to students why their logical skills play a central role in coming to terms with a challenging and influential text in the history of philosophy. The book is a very useful teaching tool and I recommend it to anybody who teaches a course on the Critique of Pure Reason. -- Nils Rauhut, Coastal Carolina University