The Philosophy of Immanuel Kant

The Philosophy of Immanuel Kant

There is a story that Schopenhauer used to begin his lectures on Kant by saying: "Let no one tell you what is contained in the Critique of Pure Reason." The writer of this little book hopes that no one will imagine that he has disregarded this warning. There are no short-cuts to the understanding of a great philosopher, and the only way to appreciate the greatness of a philosophic system is to study the philosopher's own writings. All that the writer of a book like this can hope to do is to persuade others to undertake that study by interesting them in the problems with which it deals, and by offering a few suggestions which may help to an understanding of it. I have said nothing about the numerous other works which Kant wrote. For the three Critiques contain his system, and the understanding of that is all-important. "It is a difficult matter," says Heine, "to write the life history of Immanuel Kant, for he had neither life nor history. He lived a mechanically ordered, abstract, old bachelor kind of existence in a quiet, retired alley in Knigsberg, an old town in the north-east corner of Germany." The times he lived in were stirring enough. He was born in 1724, and died in 1804. He lived through the Seven Years' War that first made Germany a nation, he followed with sympathy the United States War of Independence, he saw the French Revolution and the beginning of the career of Napoleon. Yet in all his long life he never moved out of the province in which he was born, and nothing was allowed to interrupt the steady course of his lecturing, studying, and writing. "Getting up," continues Heine, "drinking coffee, lecturing, eating, going for a walk, everything had its fixed time; and the neighbours knew that it must be exactly half-past four when Immanuel Kant, in his gray frock-coat, with his Spanish cane in his hand, stepped from his door and walked towards the little lime-tree avenue, which is called after him the Philosopher's Walk." "Strange contrast," reflects Heine, "between the man's outward life and his destructive, world-smashing thoughts." As the political history of the eighteenth century came to an end when the French Revolution spilled over the borders of France and drove Napoleon up and down Europe, breaking up the old political systems and inaugurating modern Europe, so its opposing currents of thought were gathered together in the mind of a weak-chested, half-invalid little man in Knigsberg, and from their meeting a new era in philosophy began. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 47880
Author: Lindsay, A. D. (Alexander Dunlop)
Release Date: Jan 5, 2015
Format: eBook
Language: English