Kant's Metaphysic of Experience

Abstract

EVER since the philosophy of Immanuel Kant was given to the world, in the years 1781-90, there seems to have been a tacit understanding among his readers and commentators that this philosophy would not do as it stood; and thus there has grown up a curious but almost universal custom of reading Kant not for the sake of what he said, but for the sake of what the reader presumes that he ought to have meant. Idealist philosophers, including even the German neo-Kantians after Cohen, have rejected as ‘dead’ all elements in his philosophy except those which became a basis for the work of his idealist successors, and the first large-scale commentary on Kant that was produced in Great Britain was informed by the same assumption. More recent scholars have claimed to discover, with the aid of textual criticism, that the “Critique of Pure Reason” is a patchwork of fragments, written at different dates within a period of eleven years, embodying widely different and even contradictory views, and at last hastily assembled in the space of three months. On this view, Kant has no consistent philosophy of his own; his greatness rests merely upon the enormous width of his interests and the illuminating nature of many of his suggestions, but he involves himself in far more difficulties than he elucidates.

Kant's Metaphysic of Experience:

a Commentary on the First Half of the ” Kritik der reinen Vernunft”. By Prof. H. J. Paton. (Library of Philosophy.) Vol. 1. Pp. 585. Vol. 2. Pp. 510. (London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1936.) 2 vols., 30s. net.