Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant (22 April, 1724 – 12 February, 1804), was a German philosopher from Königsberg in East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). He is regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of modern Europe and the last major philosopher of the Enlightenment.

Kant and his philosophy

Kant defined the Enlightenment, in the essay "Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?", as an age shaped by the motto, "Dare to know" (latin: Sapere aude). This involved thinking Autonomy, free of the dictates of external authority. Kant's work served as a bridge between the Rationalist and Empiricist traditions of the 18th century. He had a decisive impact on the Romantic and German Idealist philosophies of the 19th century. His work has also been a starting point for many 20th century philosophers.

The two interconnected foundations of what Kant called his "critical philosophy" of the "Copernican revolution" which he claimed to have wrought in philosophy were his epistemology (or theory of knowledge) of Transcendental Idealism and his moral philosophy of the autonomy of practical reason. These placed the active, rational human subject at the center of the cognitive and moral worlds. With regard to knowledge, Kant argued that the rational order of the world as known by science could never be accounted for merely by the fortuitous accumulation of sense perceptions. It was instead the product of the rule-based activity of "synthesis". This consisted of conceptual unification and integration carried out by the mind through concepts or the "categories of the understanding" operating on the perceptual manifold within space and time, which are not concepts, but forms of sensibility that are a priori necessary conditions for any possible experience. Thus the objective order of nature and the causal necessity that operates within it are dependent upon the mind. There is wide disagreement among Kant scholars on the correct interpretation of this train of thought. The common '2-world' interpretation regards Kant's position as a statement of epistemological limitation, that we are never able to transcend the bounds of our own mind, meaning that we cannot access the "thing-in-itself". Kant however also speaks of the thing in itself or transcendental object as a product of the (human) understanding as it attempts to conceive of objects in abstraction from the conditions of sensibility. Following this thought, interpreters have argued that the thing in itself does not represent a separate ontological domain but simply a way of considering objects by means of the understanding alone. Much of current Kant-research revolves around this dispute. With regard to morality, Kant argued that the source of the good lies not in anything outside the human subject, either in nature or given by God, but rather only the good will itself. A good will is one that acts from duty in accordance with the universal moral law that the autonomous human being freely gives itself. This law obliges one to treat humanity - understood as rational agency, and represented through oneself as well as others, as an end in itself rather than (merely) as means.

These Kantian ideas have largely framed or influenced all subsequent philosophical discussion and analysis. The specifics of Kant's account generated immediate and lasting controversy. Nevertheless, his theses that the mind itself necessarily makes a constitutive contribution to its knowledge, that this contribution is transcendental rather than psychological, that morality is rooted in human freedom and acting autonomously is to act according to rational moral principles, and that philosophy involves self-critical activity, have had a lasting effect on subsequent philosophy.

Biography

Birth and youth

Immanuel Kant - who was baptized as "Emanuel" but later changed his name to "Immanuel"—was born in 1724 in Königsberg, Kingdom of Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia) as the fourth of nine children (5 of them reached adulthood). He spent his entire life in and around his hometown, the capital of East Prussia at that time. His father Johann Georg Kant (1682-1746) was a German craftsman from Memel, Germany's northeasternmost city (now Klaipėda, Lithuania) and his mother Anna Regina Porter (1697-1737) was the daughter of a saddle/harness maker. In his youth, Kant was a solid, albeit unspectacular, student. He was raised in a Pietist household, a then popular Lutheran reform movement that stressed intense religious devotion, personal humility and a literal reading of The Bible. Consequently, Kant received a stern education—strict, punitive, and disciplinary—that favored Latin and religious instruction over mathematics and science. Kant later described this period as a time of unhappiness.

The young scholar

Kant enrolled in the University of Königsberg in 1740, at the age of 16. He studied the philosophy of Leibniz and Wolff under Martin Knutsen, a rationalist who was also familiar with the developments of British philosophy and science and who introduced Kant to the new mathematical physics of Newton. His father's stroke and subsequent death in 1746 interrupted his studies. Kant became a private tutor in the smaller towns surrounding Königsberg, but continued his scholarly research. 1749 saw the publication of his first philosophical work, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces. Kant published several more works on scientific topics and became a university lecturer in 1755. From this point on, Kant turned increasingly to philosophical issues, although he would continue to write on the sciences throughout his life. In the early 1760s, Kant produced a series of important works in philosophy. The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures, a work in logic, was published in 1762. Two more works appeared the following year: Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy and The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God. In 1764, Kant wrote Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime and then was second to Moses Mendelssohn in a Berlin Academy prize competition with his Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (often referred to as "the Prize Essay"). In 1770, at the age of 45, Kant was finally appointed Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Königsberg. Kant wrote his Inaugural Dissertation in defense of this appointment. This work saw the emergence of several central themes of his mature work, including the distinction between the faculties of intellectual thought and sensible receptivity.

The critical turn

At the age of 46, Kant was an established scholar and an increasingly influential philosopher. Much was expected of him. In response to a letter from his student, Markus Herz, Kant came to recognize that in the Inaugural Dissertation, he had failed to account for the relation and connection between our sensible and intellectual faculties. He also credited David Hume with awakening him from "dogmatic slumber" (circa 1770). Kant would not publish another work in philosophy for the next eleven years.

Kant spent his silent decade working on a solution to the problems posed. When he emerged from his silence in 1781, the result was the Critique of Pure Reason. Although now uniformly recognized as one of the greatest works in the history of philosophy, this Critique was largely ignored upon its initial publication. The book was long, over 800 pages in the original German edition, and written in a dry, scholastic style. It received few reviews, and these failed to recognize the Critique's revolutionary nature. Kant was disappointed with the work's reception. Recognizing the obscurity of the original treatise, he wrote the Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics in 1783 as a summary of its main views and he encouraged his friend, Johann Schultz, to publish a brief commentary of the Critique of Pure Reason.

Kant's reputation gradually rose through the 1780s, sparked by a series of important works: the 1784 essay, "Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?"; 1785's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (his first work on moral philosophy); and, from 1786, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. But Kant's fame ultimately arrived from an unexpected source. In 1786, Karl Reinhold began to publish a series of public letters on the Kantian philosophy. In these letters, Reinhold framed Kant's philosophy as a response to the central intellectual controversy of the era: the Pantheism Dispute. Friedrich Jacobi had accused the recently deceased Lessing (a distinguished philosopher of the period) of Spinozism. Such a charge, tantamount to atheism, was vigorously denied by Lessing's friend Moses Mendelssohn, and a bitter public dispute arose between them. The controversy gradually escalated into a general debate over the values of the Enlightenment and of reason itself. Reinhold maintained in his letters that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason could settle this dispute by defending the authority and bounds of reason. Reinhold's letters were widely read and made Kant the most famous philosopher of his era.

Kant's later work

Kant published a second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1787, heavily revising the first parts of the book. Most of his subsequent work focused on other areas of philosophy. He continued to develop his moral philosophy, notably in 1788's Critique of Practical Reason (known as the second Critique) and 1797's Metaphysics of Morals. The 1790 Critique of Judgment (the third Critique) applied the Kantian system to aesthetics and teleology. He also wrote a number of semi-popular essays on history, religion, politics and other topics. These works were well received by Kant's contemporaries and confirmed his preeminent status in eighteenth century philosophy. There were several journals devoted solely to defending and criticizing the Kantian philosophy. But despite his success, philosophical trends were moving in another direction. Many of Kant's most important disciples (including Reinhold, Beck and Fichte) transformed the Kantian position into increasingly radical forms of idealism. This marked the emergence of German Idealism. Kant was against these developments and publicly denounced Fichte in an open letterOpen letter by Kant denouncing Fichtes Philosophy (German) in 1799. It was one of his final philosophical acts. Kant's health, long poor, turned for the worse and he died in 1804. His unfinished final work, the fragmentary Opus Postumum, was (as its title suggests) published posthumously.

Erroneous beliefs

A variety of popular beliefs have arisen concerning Kant's biography and legend. It is often held, for instance, that Kant was a late bloomer, that he only became an important philosopher in his mid-50s after rejecting his earlier views. While it is true that Kant wrote his greatest works relatively late in life, there is a tendency to underestimate the value of his earlier works. Recent Kant scholarship has devoted more attention to these "pre-critical" writings and has recognized a degree of continuity with his mature work.

Another common myth concerns Kant's personal mannerisms. It is often held that Kant lived a very strict and predictable life, leading to the oft-repeated story that neighbors would set their clocks by his daily walks. Again, this is only partly true. While still young, Kant was very gregarious and, though he never married, he remained fond of dinner parties through most of his life. Only later in his life, under the influence of his friend, the English merchant Joseph Green, did Kant adopt a more regulated lifestyle.See M. Kuehn, Kant: A Biography, pp. 154-6. This work, along with the older Kant's Life and Thought, by E. Cassirer, are the main sources, in English, on the life of Kant.

Kant's moral philosophy

Kant developed his moral philosophy in three works: Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785), Critique of Practical Reason 1788), and Metaphysics of Morals [http://eserver.org/philosophy/kant/intro-to-metaphys-of-morals.txt" target="_blank" >^* (1798).

The three works proceed by a method of taking the "rational obvious, and everyday knowledge of the moral to the philosophical of the moral" in the Groundwork - and also making necessary the moral works that followed; and then, in those latter works, following a method of using "practical reason", based only upon things about which reason can tell us, and not deriving any principles from experience, to reach conclusions which are able to be applied to the world of experience (in the second part of The Metaphysic of Morals). The German Philosopher Schopenhauer's criticism of Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals is a careful analysis of Kant's book.

Kant is known for his theory that there is a single moral obligation, which he called the Categorical Imperative, which is derived from the concept of duty. It is from the Categorical Imperative that all other moral obligations are generated, and by which all moral obligations can be tested. He believed that the moral law is a principle of reason itself, and is not based on contingent facts about the world, such as what would make us happy. Accordingly, he believed that moral obligation applies to all and only rational agents.

A categorical imperative is an unconditional obligation; that is, it has the force of an obligation regardless of our will or desires. (Contrast this with hypothetical imperative.) Kant's categorical imperative was formulated in three ways, which he believed to be roughly equivalent (although many commentators do not):

The first formulation (Formula of Universal Law) says: "Act as if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a universal law of nature."

The second formulation (Formula of Humanity) says: "Act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means."

The third formulation (Formula of Autonomy) is a synthesis of the first two. It says that we should so act that we may think of ourselves as legislating universal laws through our maxims, in a possible Kingdom of Ends.

The first formulation

The most popular interpretation of the first formulation is called the "universalizability test." An agent's maxim, according to Kant, is his "subjective principle of volition" — that is, what the agent believes is his reason to act. The universalizability test has five steps:

Find the agent's maxim. The maxim is an action paired with its motivation. Example: "I will lie for personal benefit." Lying is the action, the motivation is to get what you desire. Paired together they form the maxim.
Imagine a possible world in which everyone in a similar position to the real-world agent followed that maxim.
Decide whether any contradictions or irrationalities arise in the possible world as a result of following the maxim.
If a contradiction or irrationality arises, acting on that maxim is not allowed in the real world.
If there is no contradiction, then acting on that maxim is permissible, and in some instances required.

(For a modern parallel, see John Rawls' hypothetical situation, the original position.)

The second formulation

The common summary interpretation of Kant's second formulation is "treat each person as an end, not as a means to an end".

Religious beliefs

Although he did not attend regular Church services, Kant stated the practical necessity for a belief in God in his Critique of Pure Reason and made a moral argument for the existence of God. See Argument from morality for more details.

Political philosophy

In Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795) Kant listed several conditions that he thought necessary for ending wars and creating a lasting peace. They included a world of constitutional republics. This was the first version of the democratic peace theory.

He opposed "democracy", which at his time meant direct democracy, believing that majority rule posed a threat to individual liberty. He says, "Democracy is necessarily despotism, as it establishes an executive power contrary to the general will; all being able to decide against one whose opinion may differ, the will of all is therefore not that of all: which is contradictory and opposite to liberty."

Aesthetic philosophy

Kant discusses the subjective nature of aesthetic qualities and experiences in Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, (1764). Kant's contribution to aesthetic theory is developed in the Critique of Judgment (1790) where he investigates the possibility and logical status of "judgments of taste". In the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment", the first major division of the Critique of Judgment, Kant used the term "aesthetic" in a manner that is, according to Kant scholar W.H. Walsh, its modern sense. Prior to this, in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant had, in order to note the essential differences between judgments of taste, moral judgments , and scientific judgments, abandoned use of the term "aesthetic" as "designating the critique of taste", noting that judgments of taste could never be "directed" by "laws a priori". He was one of the first philosophers to develop and integrate aesthetic theory into a unified and comprehensive philosophical system, utilizing ideas that played an integral role throughout his philosophy.

In the chapter "Analytic of the Beautiful" of the Critique of Judgment , Kant states that beauty is not a property of an artwork or natural phenomenon, but instead a mental state - the pleasure derived from having made a judgement of taste. Even though it appears that we are using reason to decide what we find beautiful, feelings for the beautiful belong to the faculty of the understanding and we feel that we can convince others to share our passions. A judgement of taste is in fact purely subjective and is based on nothing but esteem for an object itself: it is a disinterested pleasure. Kant also believed that a judgement of taste shares characteristics engaged in a moral judgement: both are disinterested, and we hold them to be universal. In the chapter "Analytic of the Sublime" Kant identifies the sublime as an aesthetic quality which, like beauty, is subjective, but unlike beauty shares the character of moral judgments as belonging to the faculty of reason. The feeling of the sublime is derived from one's estimation of natural objects and the realization that they are not equal to the expectations of one's moral ideas. This appreciation of moral feeling through exposure to the sublime helps to develop moral character.

Kant had developed the distinction between an object of art as a material value subject to the conventions of society and the transcendental condition of the judgment of taste as a "refined" value in the propositions of his Idea of A Universal History (1784). In the Fourth and Fifth Theses of that work he identified all art as the "fruits of unsociableness" due to men's "antagonism in society", and in the Seventh Thesis asserted that while such material property is indicative of a civilized state, only the ideal of morality and the universalization of refined value through the improvement of the mind of man "belongs to culture." (L.W. Beck translation)

Influence

Kant's most powerful and revolutionary effect on philosophy, which changed forever its meaning, modes of thinking, and language(s), was not "positive" in the sense of producing specific assertions about the world that have become accepted truths, as in the positive sciences. Rather it was "negative" in the sense of restricting the areas about which such knowledge was possible — by making philosophy "critical" and self-critical. Kant's idea of "critique" was to examine the legitimate scope of the mind or of knowledge. In this regard the "critique of pure reason", which was also the title of his most important work (see below and Critique of Pure Reason), meant examining what certain and legitimate knowledge human beings could arrive at simply by thinking about things independently of experience and perception, with his conclusion being: not very much. Prior to Kant, the entire mode of functioning of most philosophy was drawing conclusions about the nature of the universe, of God, or of the soul simply by logical thinking about them, by what seemed to make sense through "a priori" thinking, i.e. thinking on purely logical grounds. For this sort of thinking it must be the case that God or the universe is this way or that way, because it makes sense logically. But, in the history of philosophy, for every philosophical theory that God or the universe or the mind must be one way, some philosopher arrived at another theory stating that it must be precisely the opposite way. Kant called this unproductive, irresoluble, back-and-forth, dogmatic thinking the "dialectic of pure reason". That is, it was an inevitable consequence of trying to arrive at knowledge on purely logical grounds independently of experience or of scientific knowledge based on the evidence of the senses. For Kant, this entire style of pursuing knowledge was bankrupt and must be abandoned. According to Kant, philosophy must henceforth operate within the narrow "limits of pure reason" and recognize that most positive knowledge could come only through the sciences based on sense perception and not through metaphysics, which was about things of which we could never have direct sense perception.

Arthur Schopenhauer was strongly influenced by Kant's transcendental idealism, accepting its distinction between phenomena and noumena. But where Kant denied the possibility of knowledge about the noumena, Schopenhauer claimed that the things-in-themselves can be directly experienced as the basis of that which, in animal life, is known as will, desire, striving, craving, or urging. Schopenhauer claimed that the will as such, as thing-in-itself, is the inner, essential nature of the whole experienced world. Some important philosophers and schools of thought, such as German Idealists, neo-Thomists and other theologically oriented philosophers, and Heidegger's "fundamental ontology" have refused to accept the limitations that Kant imposed upon philosophy and attempted to come up with new metaphysical systems about "the Absolute", "God", or "Being" , although even these philosophers have generally tried doing so by taking Kant into account. Overall, however, post-Kantian philosophy has never been able to return to the style of thinking, arguing, and asserting conclusions that characterized philosophy before him. In this way, Kant was correct in asserting that he had brought about a "Copernican revolution" in philosophy. According to Kant, Copernicus's revolution in the understanding of the cosmos lay in taking the position of the observer into account. This explained why it looks as though the sun revolves around the earth even though in reality the earth revolves around the sun. Taking the observer's position into account prevents the unaware projection of the observer's perception or point of view onto the picture of the universe. Kant saw his own Copernican revolution in philosophy, analogously, as consisting in taking the position of the knower into account and thereby preventing the unaware projection of the knower's way of thinking ("pure reason") onto the philosophical map of reality. According to Kant, it was philosophers unawarely doing this that had created the illusions of metaphysics that dominated the prior history of philosophy. Kant saw this revolution, in turn, as being part of "Enlightenment" (as conceived of in the Age of Enlightenment) and the creation of an enlightened citizenry and society freed from dogmatism and irrational authority.

Kant's wider influence not only in philosophy but in the humanities and social sciences generally lies in the central concept of the Critique of Pure Reason, namely that it is the synthesizing, unifying, constitutive activity of the subject of knowledge that is at the basis of our having an ordered world of experience and of the objects of knowledge themselves. This idea has spread out through many intellectual disciplines in which it has manifested itself in different forms, for example:

from Marx's notion, in social theory, of the constitutive role of human labor in the creation of history and society
through Freud's notion, in psychology, that the activity of the ego produces the reality principle
through Durkheim's notion, in sociology, that society creates collective consciousness through social categories
through Chomsky's notion, in linguistics, of transformational grammar
to current notions, in several of the humanities and social sciences, regarding the "social construction of reality" (Berger & Luckmann, 1966).

In this way Kant's conception of synthesizing, ordering mental activity has become central to modern intellectual culture.

Kant is today considered to be the creator of the democratic peace theory, one of the main controversies in political science.

Tomb

From 1873 to 1881, money was raised to build a monument chapel. His tomb and its pillared enclosure outside the Königsberg Cathedral in Kaliningrad, on the Pregolya (Pregel) River, are some of the few artifacts of German times preserved by the Soviets after they conquered the city in 1945. Kant's original tomb was demolished by Russian bombs early in that year. A replica of a statue of Kant that stood in front of the university was donated by a German entity in 1991 and placed on the original pediment. Newlyweds bring flowers to the chapel, as they formerly did for Lenin's monument. Near his tomb is the following inscription in German and Russian, taken from the "Conclusion" of his Critique of Practical Reason: "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me."

Bibliography

(1749) Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte)
(1755) A New Explanation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Knowledge (Neue Erhellung der ersten Grundsätze metaphysischer Erkenntnisse; Doctoral Thesis: Principiorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae nova dilucidatio)
(1755) Universal Natural History and Theory of Heaven (Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels ^*)
(1762) The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures (Die falsche Spitzfindigkeit der vier syllogistischen Figuren)
(1763) The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God (Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseins Gottes)
(1763) Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy (Versuch den Begriff der negativen Größen in die Weltweisheit einzuführen)
(1764) Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen)
(1764) Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (the Prize Essay) (Untersuchungen über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie und der Moral)
(1770) Inaugural Dissertation (De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis)
(1781) First edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft [http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/kant/krva/krva.htm)
(1783) Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics ^* (Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik)
(1784) "An Answer To The Question: What Is Enlightenment?" (Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? ^*)
(1784) Idea For A Universal History With A Cosmopolitan Purpose (Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht)
(1785) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten)
(1786) Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft)
(1787) Second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft [http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/kant/krvb/krvb.htm)
(1788) Critique of Practical Reason (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft [http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/kant/kritikpr/kritikpr.htm)
(1790) Critique of Judgment (Kritik der Urteilskraft ^*)
(1790) The Science of Right ^*
(1793) Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone (Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft) ^*
(1795) Perpetual Peace (Zum ewigen Frieden [http://www.uni-kassel.de/fb5/frieden/themen/Theorie/kant.html)
(1797) Metaphysics of Morals (Metaphysik der Sitten)
(1798) Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht)
(1798) The Contest of Faculties (Der Streit der Fakultäten [http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/kant/streit/streit.htm)
(1800) Logic (Logik)
(1803) On Pedagogy (Über Pädagogik ^*)
(1804) Opus Postumum
(More German works at Wikisource)
(More German works at Project Gutenberg)
(More English works at The University of Adelaide Library)

Footnotes

References and further reading

Any suggestion of further reading on Kant has to take cognizance of the fact that his work has dominated philosophy like no other figure after him. Nevertheless, several guideposts can be made out. In Germany, the most important contemporary interpreter of Kant and the movement of German Idealism which he began is Dieter Henrich, who has some work available in English. P.F. Strawson's "The Bounds of Sense" (1969) played a significant role in determining the contemporary reception of Kant in England and America. At the same time, many key features of his position have been widely rejected. More recent interpreters of note in the English-speaking world include Lewis White Beck, Jonathan Benett, Henry Allison, Paul Guyer, Robert B Pippin, Rudolf Makkreel, and Béatrice Longuenesse.

General introductions to Kant's thought

Broad C. D. Kant: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press, 1978. ISBN 0521217555, ISBN 0521292654

Biography and historical context

Beck, Lewis White. Early German Philosophy: Kant and his Predecessors. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969.

a survey of Kant's intellectual background

Beiser, Frederick C. The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.

Cassirer, Ernst. Kant's Life and Thought. Translation of Kants Leben und Lehre. Trans., Jame S. Haden, intr. Stephan Körner. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981.

Kuehn, Manfred. Kant: A Biography. Cambridge University Press, 2001. ISBN 0521497043

this is now the standard biography of Kant in English

Pinkard, Terry. German philosophy, 1760-1860: The Legacy of Idealism. Cambridge, 2002.

Sassen, Brigitte. ed. Kant's Early Critics: The Empiricist Critique of the Theoretical Philosophy, 2000.

Collections of essays

Guyer, Paul. ed. The Cambridge Companion to Kant. Cambridge University Press, 1992. ISBN 0521365872, ISBN 0521367689

an excellent collection of papers that covers most areas of Kant's thought

Mohanty, J.N. and Robert W. Shahan. eds. Essays on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, 1982. ISBN 0806117826

Proceedings of the International Kant Congresses. Several Congresses (numbered) edited by various publishers.

Förster, Eckart ed. "Kant's Transcendental Deductions: The Three 'Critiques' and the 'Opus Postumum.'" Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989.

''includes an important essay by Dieter Henrich'

Cohen, Ted and Paul Guyer eds. ''Essays in Kant's Aesthetics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.

essays on Kant's Critique of Judgment

Phillips, Dewi et al. Kant and Kierkegaard on Religion. Palgrave Macmillian, 2000, ISBN 0312232349

A collection of essays about Kantian religion and its influence on Kierkegaardian and contemporary philosophy of religion.

On Kant's theoretical philosophy

Allison, Henry. Kant’s Transcendental Idealism. New Haven : Yale University Press, 1983, 2004. ISBN 0300036299, ISBN 0300030029

very influential defense of Kant's idealism, recently revised

Ameriks, Karl. "Kant's Theory of Mind: An Analysis of the Paralogisms of Pure Reason." Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.

one of the first detailed studies of the Dialectic in English

Gram, Moltke S. The Transcendental Turn: The Foundation of Kant's Idealism. Gainesville : University Presses of Florida, 1984. ISBN 0813007879

Guyer, Paul. "Kant and the Claims of Knowledge." Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

a modern defense of the view that Kant's theoretical philosophy is a "patchwork" of ill-fitting arguments

Henrich, Dieter. The Unity of Reason: Essays on Kant’s Philosophy. Edited and with an introduction by Richard L. Velkley ; translated by Jeffrey Edwards ... al.. Harvard University Press, 1994. ISBN 0674929055

Kemp Smith, Norman. "A Commentary to Kant's ‘Critique of Pure Reason.’" London: Macmillan, 1930.

a somewhat dated, but influential commentary on the first Critique, recently reprinted

Kitcher, Patricia. "Kant's Transcendental Psychology." New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Longuenesse, Béatrice. Kant and the Capacity to Judge. Princeton University Press, 1998. ISBN 0691043485

argues that the notion of judgment provides the key to understanding the overall argument of the first Critique

Melnick, Arthur. "Kant's Analogies of Experience." Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973.

an important study of Kant's Analogies, including his defense of the principle of causality

Paton, H. J. "Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience: A Commentary on the First Half of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft." Two volumes. London: Macmillan, 1936.

an extensive study of Kant's theoretical philosophy

Pippin, Robert B. Kant's Theory of Form: An Essay on the Critique of Pure Reason. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982.

an influential examination of the formal character of Kant's work

Arthur Schopenhauer: Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Erster Band. Anhang. Kritik der Kantischen Philosophie. F. A. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1859 (In English: Arthur Schopenhauer, New York: Dover Press, Volume I, Appendix, "Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy," ISBN 0-486-21761-2)

Strawson, P.F. The Bounds of Sense: an essay on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Routledge, 1989.

the work that revitalized the interest of contemporary analytic philosophers in Kant

Wolff, Robert Paul. Kant's theory of mental activity: A commentary on the transcendental analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963.

a detailed and influential commentary on the first part of the Critique of Pure Reason

On Kant's practical philosophy

Allison, Henry, Kant's theory of freedom Cambridge university press 1990.
Banham, Gary. Kant's Practical Philosophy: From Critique to Doctrine Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Brooks, Thom, 'Corlett on Kant, Hegel, and Retribution', Philosophy 76 (2001): 561-80.
Brooks, Thom, 'Kant's Theory of Punishment', Utilitas 15 (2003): 206-24.
Brooks, Thom, 'T. H. Green's Theory of Punishment', History of Political Thought 24 (2003): 685-701.
Brooks, Thom, 'Kantian Punioshment and Retributivism', Ratio 18 (2005): 237-45.
Michalson, Gordon E. Fallen Freedom: Kant on Radical Evil and Moral Regeneration. Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Michalson, Gordon E. Kant and the Problem of God. Blackwell Publishers, 1999.
Paton, H. J. The Categorical Imperative; a study in Kant's moral philosophy University of Pennsylvania press 1971.
Rawls, John. Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy. Cambridge, 2000.
Wolff, Robert Paul. The Autonomy of Reason: A Commentary on Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. New York: HarperCollins, 1974. ISBN 0061317926.

On Kant's aesthetics

Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claim of Taste. Cambridge MA and London, 1979.
Crawford, Donald. Kant's Aesthetic Theory. Wisconsin, 1974.
Makkreel, Rudolf, Imagination and Interpretation in Kant. Chicago, 1990.
McCloskey, Mary. Kant's Aesthetic. SUNY, 1987.
Schaper, Eva. Studies in Kant's Aesthetics. Edinburgh, 1979.
Zupancic, Alenka. Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan. Verso, 2000.
Hammermeister, Kai. The German Aesthetic Tradition. Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Other work on Kant

Caygill, Howard. A Kant Dictionary. Oxford, UK; Cambridge, Mass., USA : Blackwell Reference, 1995. ISBN 0631175342, ISBN 0631175350

Contemporary philosophy with a Kantian influence

Korsgaard, Christine. Creating the Kingdom of Ends. Cambridge ; New York, NY, USA : Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 0521496446, ISBN 0521499623 (pbk.)

not a commentary, but a defense of a broadly Kantian approach to ethics

McDowell, John. Mind and World. Harvard University Press, 1994. ISBN 0674576098

offers a Kantian solution to a dilemma in contemporary epistemology regarding the relation between mind and world

Wood, Allen. Kant's Ethical Thought. Cambridge ; New York, NY, USA : Cambridge University Press, 1999. ISBN 052164836X

a comprehensive, in depth study of Kant's ethics, with emphasis on formula of humanity as most accurate formulation of the categorical imperative (according to similar arguments as Korsgaard)

External links

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