Kant : A revolution in thinking / Marcus Willaschek ; translated by Peter Lewis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Willaschek, Marcus, author.

Contributor:

Lewis, Peter, 1958- translator.

Standardized Title:

Kant: Revolution des Denkens. English.

Language:

English

German

Subjects (All):

Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804.

Kant, Immanuel.

Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804--Influence.

Philosophers--Germany--Biography.

Philosophers.

Philosophy--Germany--18th century.

Philosophy.

Philosophy--Germany--19th century.

Philosophy--History.

Germany.

Genre:

Biographies

Biographies.

Translations

Physical Description:

xii, 403 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2025.

Language Note:

In English, translated from the original German.

Summary:

"Immanuel Kant revolutionized philosophical method and decisively shaped modern politics. Three hundred years after Kant's birth, Marcus Willaschek brings together the German idealist's life and thought, examining the personality who changed the course of intellectual history as well as the substance and enduring importance of his ideas."--provided by publisher.

"Immanuel Kant is undoubtedly the most important philosopher of the modern era. His Critique of Pure Reason, "categorical imperative," and conception of perpetual peace in the global order decisively influenced both intellectual history and twentieth-century politics, shaping everything from the German Constitution to the United Nations Charter. Renowned philosopher Marcus Willaschek explains why, three centuries after Kant's birth, his reflections on democracy, beauty, nature, morality, and the limits of human knowledge remain so profoundly relevant. Weaving biographical and historical context together with exposition of key ideas, Willaschek emphasizes three central features of Kant's theory and method. First, Kant combines seemingly incompatible positions to show how their insights can be reconciled. Second, he demonstrates that it is not only human thinking that must adjust to the realities of the world; the world must also be fitted to the structures of our thinking. Finally, he overcomes the traditional opposition between thought and action by putting theory at the service of practice. In Kant: A Revolution in Thinking, even readers having no prior acquaintance with Kant's ideas or with philosophy generally will find an adroit introduction to the Prussian polymath's oeuvre, beginning with his political arguments, expanding to his moral theory, and finally moving to his more abstract considerations of natural science, epistemology, and metaphysics. Along the way, Kant himself emerges from beneath his famed works, revealing a magnetic personality, a clever ironist, and a man deeply engaged with his contemporary world."--from the inside front flap.

Contents:

Preface

Kant's Three Revolutions

Politics and History Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason: The highest political good: "Perpetual" peace

Moses Mendelssohn and the advancement of Humankind

The Enlightenment and its dialectic

Freedom and coercion: Kant on education

The Morality of Reason: The cult of reason: Of humans, deities, and extraterrestrials

Great Kant, the categorical imperative doesn't help a bit!

The mason as an end in himself

"Rousseau brought me around": Human dignity and autonomy

The "Highest Good" and the best of all possible worlds

Rational Beings in Society: "I have seen the world's salvation!": Kant on justice and revolution

"This is mine": On intellectual and other property

A cosmopolitan in Königsberg

The freedoms of a humble servant

God's Kingdom on Earth: Kant's religion of reason

Humans as Part of Nature: What (and who) is a Human Being?

On wit and other faculties: Kant as psychologist

Do beautiful things show that humans belong in the world?

"The starry heavens above me": Kant as scientist

Are animals machines? Kant on teleology

Metaphysical Knowledge and Its Limits: Metaphysics: Ultimate questions with no answers?

Critique: Reason scrutinizes everything, even itself

We must make our concepts sensible!

Bodies in the mirror: Kant on space

Objectivity (almost) without an object

Dispute over Things-in-Themselves: Kant's Critique and its first critics

Infinite series or a prime mover? Kant on Free Will

Was Kant an Atheist?

The end: How everything interrelates: Philosophy

"The pure gold of his philosophy": Kant's legacy

Chronology

Glossary of philosophical terms

Note on sources

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index.

Notes:

First published in German as Kant: Die Revolution des Denkens, 2023.

Includes glossary.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Willaschek, Marcus. Kant

ebook version :

ISBN:

9780674296107

0674296109

OCLC:

1484541962

Publisher Number:

CIPO000264275