Kant

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

This seminar revolves around a close reading of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787). We will approach this text as part of Kant’s ongoing engagement with the 18th-century philosophical traditions and controversies. Accordingly, we will read it along with some of Kant’s published and unpublished works before 1781, as well as excerpts from works by his important German predecessors and contemporaries such as Wolff, Baumgarten, and Crusius. We aim at going through the entire part I the Critique (Transcendental Doctrine of Elements), which includes Transcendental Aesthetic, Transcendental Analytic, and Transcendental Dialectic. Our primary goal is to achieve a historically informed understanding of all the major philosophical problems Kant tries to address in the Critique.