Opus Postumum

Opus Postumum
Author: Immanuel Kant
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 372
Release: 1995-02-24
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780521319287

Occupying him for more than the last decade of his life, this volume includes the first English translation of Kant's last major work, the so-called Opus postumum, which he described as his "chef d'oeuvre" and the keystone of his entire philosophical system.

The Post-Critical Kant

The Post-Critical Kant
Author: Bryan Hall
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2014-10-10
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1317624041

In this book, Bryan Wesley Hall breaks new ground in Kant scholarship, exploring the gap in Kant’s Critical philosophy in relation to his post-Critical work by turning to Kant’s final, unpublished work, the so-called Opus Postumum. Although Kant considered this project to be the "keystone" of his philosophical efforts, it has been largely neglected by scholars. Hall argues that only by understanding the Opus Postumum can we fully comprehend both Kant’s mature view as well as his Critical project. In letters from 1798, Kant claims to have discovered a "gap" in the Critical philosophy that requires effecting a "transition from the metaphysical foundations of natural science to physics"; unfortunately, Kant does not make clear exactly what this gap is or how the transition is supposed to fill the gap. To resolve these issues, Hall draws on the Opus Postumum, arguing that Kant’s transition project can solve certain perennial problems with the Critical philosophy. This volume provides a powerful alternative to all current interpretations of the Opus Postumum, arguing that Kant’s transition project is best seen as the post-Critical culmination of his Critical philosophy. Hall carefully examines the deep connections between the Opus Postumum and the view Kant develops in the Critique of Pure Reason, to suggest that properly understanding the post-Critical Kant will significantly revise our view of Kant’s Critical period.

Kant's Final Synthesis

Kant's Final Synthesis
Author: Eckart Förster
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2000
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780674001664

This is the first book in English devoted entirely to Kantâe(tm)s Opus Postumum and its place in the Kantian oeuvre. Over the last few decades, the importance of this text for our understanding of Kantâe(tm)s philosophy has emerged with increasing clarity. Although Kant began it in order to solve a relatively minor problem within his philosophy, his reflections soon forced him to readdress virtually all the key problems of his critical philosophy: the objective validity of the categories, the dynamical theory of matter, the natures of space and time, the refutation of idealism, the theory of the self and its agency, the question of living organisms, the doctrine of the practical postulates and the idea of God, the unity of theoretical and practical reason, and the idea of transcendental philosophy itself. In the end Kant was convinced that these problems, some of which had preoccupied him throughout his career, could finally be brought to a coherent and adequate solution and integrated into a single philosophical conception. As Eckart Förster shows in his penetrating study, Kantâe(tm)s conviction deserves not only our intellectual respect but also our undivided philosophical attention. Förster provides detailed analyses of the key problems of Kantâe(tm)s Opus Postumum and also relates them to Kantâe(tm)s major published writings. In this way he provides unique insights into the extraordinary continuity and inner dynamics of Kantâe(tm)s transcendental philosophy as it progresses toward its final synthesis.

Kant and the Exact Sciences

Kant and the Exact Sciences
Author: Michael Friedman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 396
Release: 1992
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780674500358

Kant sought throughout his life to provide a philosophy adequate to the sciences of his time--especially Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics. In this new book, Michael Friedman argues that Kant's continuing efforts to find a metaphysics that could provide a foundation for the sciences is of the utmost importance in understanding the development of his philosophical thought from its earliest beginnings in the thesis of 1747, through the Critique of Pure Reason, to his last unpublished writings in the Opus postumum. Previous commentators on Kant have typically minimized these efforts because the sciences in question have since been outmoded. Friedman argues that, on the contrary, Kant's philosophy is shaped by extraordinarily deep insight into the foundations of the exact sciences as he found them, and that this represents one of the greatest strengths of his philosophy. Friedman examines Kant's engagement with geometry, arithmetic and algebra, the foundations of mechanics, and the law of gravitation in Part One. He then devotes Part Two to the Opus postumum, showing how Kant's need to come to terms with developments in the physics of heat and in chemistry formed a primary motive for his projected Transition from the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science to Physics. Kant and the Exact Sciences is a book of high scholarly achievement, argued with impressive power. It represents a great advance in our understanding of Kant's philosophy of science.

Kant and Mysticism

Kant and Mysticism
Author: Stephen R. Palmquist
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 183
Release: 2019-07-10
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1793604657

What is happening when someone has a mystical experience, such as “feeling at one with the universe” or “hearing God’s voice?” Does philosophy provide tools for assessing such claims? Which claims can be dismissed as delusions and which ones convey genuine truths that might be universally meaningful? Valuable insights into such pressing questions can be found in the writings of Immanuel Kant, though few philosophical commentators have appreciated the implications beyond his famous “Copernican hypothesis.” In Kant and Mysticism, Stephen R. Palmquist corrects this skewed view of Kant once and for all. Beginning with a detailed analysis of Kant’s 1766 work Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, Palmquist demonstrates that in Dreams Kant first discovers and explains his plan to write a new, “critical” philosophy that will revolutionize metaphysics by laying bare the limits of human reason. Palmquist shows how the same metaphorical relationship—between reason’s dreams (metaphysics) and sensibility’s dreams (mysticism)—permeates Kant’s mature writings. Clarifying how Kant’s final (unfinished) book, Opus Postumum, completes this dual project, Palmquist explains how the “critical mysticism” entailed by Kant’s position has profound implications for contemporary understandings of religious and mystical experience, both by religious individuals and by philosophers seeking to understand such experiences.

The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy

The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy
Author: Eckart Förster
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 425
Release: 2012-03-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0674064984

Kant declared that philosophy began in 1781 with his Critique of Pure Reason. In 1806 Hegel announced that philosophy had now been completed. Eckart Förster examines the reasons behind these claims and assesses the steps that led in such a short time from Kant's "(Bbeginning" to Hegel's "(Bend." He concludes that, in an unexpected yet significant sense, both Kant and Hegel were indeed right. The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy follows the unfolding of a key idea during this exceptionally productive period: the Kantian idea that philosophy can be scientific and, consequently, can be completed. Förster's study combines historical research with philosophical insight and leads him to propose a new thesis. The development of Kant's transcendental philosophy in his three Critiques, Förster claims, resulted in a fundamental distinction between "(Bintellectual intuition" and "(Bintuitive understanding." Overlooked until now, this distinction yields two takes on how to pursue philosophy as science after Kant. One line of thought culminates in Fichte's theory of freedom (Wissenschaftslehre), while the other--and here Förster brings Goethe's significance to the fore--results in Goethe's transformation of the Kantian idea of an intuitive understanding in light of Spinoza's third kind of knowledge. Both strands are brought together in Hegel and propel his split from Schelling. Förster's work makes an original contribution to our understanding of the classical era of German philosophy--an expanding interest within the Anglophone philosophical community.

Kant and Spinozism

Kant and Spinozism
Author: B. Lord
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2010-11-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0230297722

Beth Lord looks at Kant's philosophy in relation to four thinkers who attempted to fuse transcendental idealism with Spinoza's doctrine of immanence. Examining Jacobi, Herder, Maimon and Deleuze, Lord argues that Spinozism is central to the development of Kant's thought, and opens new avenues for understanding Kant's relation to Deleuze.

Cosmological Aesthetics through the Kantian Sublime and Nietzschean Dionysian

Cosmological Aesthetics through the Kantian Sublime and Nietzschean Dionysian
Author: Erman Kaplama
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2013-12-12
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0761862595

Erman Kaplama explores the principle of transition (Übergang) from metaphysics to physics developed by Kant in his unfinished magnum opus, Opus Postumum. Drawing on the Heraclitean logos and Kant’s notions of sense-intuition (Anschauung) and reflective judgment, Kaplama interprets transition as an aesthetic principle. He revises the idea of nature (phusis) as the principle of motion referring to Heraclitus’ cosmology as well as Heidegger’s and Nietzsche’s lectures on the pre-Socratics. Kaplama compares the Kantian sublime and Nietzschean Dionysian as aesthetic theories representing the transition from the sensible to supersensible and as cosmological theories that consider human nature (ethos) as an extension of nature. In light of such Nietzschean notions as the eternal recurrence and will to power, the Dionysian is shown to trigger the transition by which nature and art are redefined. Finally, Cosmological Aesthetics employs the principles of transition and motion to analyze Van Gogh’s Starry Night in an excursus.