Reading Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

MA Liberal Arts
Semester 1 2019-20, Mondays 5pm-7pm SAB 301, beginning Monday 23rd September

Reading Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason

In our first semester of the new academic year we will be offering a lecture series on Kant’s famous book, the Critique of Pure Reason. The lectures will not be about the book, they will be from it. Our aim is to read the book together, and to learn from sharing the experience of doing so.

We will have in mind that the book announces Kant’s famous ‘Copernican Revolution’ in metaphysics. We will spend our time trying to see if we can understand what this Revolution is. Clearly in 12 weeks we are not going to be able to read every word of the Critique—we will select passages that will best help us. But that is only part of the story. If we can understand his main arguments, then we will see that Kant is making the case for a very special type of philosophical experience. We will try to have this experience with him, as best we can. And if we can do this, then we might not only understand his revolutionary thinking, we might also be doing this revolutionary thinking for ourselves. What kind of education this is for us might be one of our most interesting questions…

Remember, the lectures are optional, and I’m not expecting anyone to have read anything in advance. No formal work is attached to the sessions. They are for our own enjoyment (!) However, unlike last year, because the of task that faces us, there will be some material produced in advance to help with the lectures.

The translation we will use is that of Norman Kemp Smith. The original was published by Kant in 1781 and again in 1787, and Kemp Smith’s translation first appeared in 1929. As such, it is freely available to download from here. You might prefer to work from a hard copy in the lectures. In which case there are second hand versions cheaply available, or there is a recent reprint from Palgrave with a new Introduction by Howard Caygill.

The new version:

Or there are various older second hand copies available, e.g.

It is also available free as a download from this website:

https://ia800706.us.archive.org/13/items/immanuelkantscri032379mbp/immanuelkantscri032379mbp.pdf

Some ways of buying:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Critique-Pure-Reason-Second-Kant/dp/0230013384/ref=pd_sbs_14_1/260-7116127-1568339?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0230013384&pd_rd_r=300c686a-5896-4120-94bd-abd6ac2b14cf&pd_rd_w=lz7vb&pd_rd_wg=ewo2c&pf_rd_p=15756fbb-4ceb-4379-9d2c-7af36daab01e&pf_rd_r=X4AZXVZKYCHHXNZH7GKT&psc=1&refRID=X4AZXVZKYCHHXNZH7GKT

https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=22694546966&searchurl=an%3Dkant%2Bsmith%2Bnorman%2Bkemp%26sortby%3D3%26tn%3Dcritique%2Bof%2Bpure%2Breason&cm_sp=snippet-_-srp1-_-title1

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Critique-Reason-Macmillan-student-editions/dp/0333057139
(second hand from 0.50p here)

https://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9780230013377

Each week we will work from a lecture, and an already-annotated version of the text. I will tell you how to access this when we first meet.

It is obvious, I suppose, that you will get most out of the lecture series by coming each week and making a commitment to the sessions. But these are optional lectures and I am sure that you will find your own rhythms with them.

Because we have little time to spare, we will be starting on Monday of week 1, 23^rd September, 2019, in SAB 301. I hope to have e mailed everyone before that to remind them.

Here is the running order of the lectures. Experience tells me that we will not, nor do we have to, neatly finish each lecture each week. We will just work through them, still aiming to finish the 9 lectures across the 12 weeks.

LECTURE 1 Four Beginnings and the Transcendental.

LECTURE 2 Metaphysics

LECTURE 3 Analytic and Synthetic Judgement

LECTURE 4 The Copernican Revolution

LECTURE 5 Transcendental Aesthetic

LECTURE 6 Transcendental Logic

LECTURE 7 Principles of Pure Understanding (and the Tables)

LECTURE 8 The Object

LECTURE 9 Transcendental Dialectic

And if you want to make a start in your own, then look at the suggested reading at the bottom of the page, and perhaps try the following section:

Chapter 1, section 2 of the Transcendental Critique of Method, pp. 593-612.

As you read these pages, bear in mind what Kant says about how easily ‘philosophising’ becomes vacuous with people merely competing for victory in arguments. This is not his vision of philosophy or of philosophising. There is

‘no polemic in the field of pure reason. Both parties beat the air, and wrestle with their own shadows, since they go beyond the limits of nature, where there is nothing they can seize and hold with their dogmatic grasp. Fight as they may, the shadows which they cleave asunder grow together again forthwith, like the heroes in Valhalla, to disport themselves anew in the bloodless contests’ (A 756/B 784, p. 604).

See you all soon,

Lecture Breakdown:

LECTURE 1: Four Beginnings and the Transcendental

Reading