Introducing Kant [Paperback]

Christopher Want (Author), Andrzej Klimowski (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 13, 1997 | Series: Introducing

Focusing on Immanuel Kant's critiques of pure reason, practical reason and judgement, this text leads the reader through the main formal concepts with which Kant has become associated: the relation of mind to the senses, the question of freedom and the law, and the revaluation of metaphysics. This book paces Kant in his context as a thinker of the Enlightenment, and also explains the reasons for his continuing importance to contemporary philosophy.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This book series is part of an alarming trend in higher education?learning through amusement?and an even more alarming new genre?intellectual comic books trafficking as serious learning tools. It is to philosophy what the Classic Comic is to literature and the campaign ad to politics: Cliff Notes meet the sound bite. Short on text and long on large cartoons?emotivism gets 13 lines and four dialog balloons; the Theory of Forms seven lines and two balloons?the texts badly introduce individual thinkers or areas of thought. The sound bite is empty enough when presenting facts, but as a way to get across concepts, positions and arguments, it is self-defeating. These works necessarily emphasize what the thinker thinks, presented informationally, not why or how those conclusions were reached. Thus, even when the texts aren't superficial, the thinkers' claims are utterly obscure. The art work is high quality and witty, and the agenda clearly postmodern?Kant is read as a protodeconstructionist, the universalist enterprise of ethics gets mocked. Thus, their best audience is the opposite of the one intended: not the beginner but the advanced reader of philosophy who can appreciate the fun. At their best, these works belong in Father Guido Sarducci's "Five-Minute College," in which for each course he gives a slogan. At their worst, these books will change remembering a slogan to remembering a picture. Not recommended.?Lee Horvitz, Miami Univ., Middletown, Ohio
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Totem Books; Second Edition edition (August 13, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1840460814
• ISBN-13: 978-1840460810
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,425,513 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Worst of the series, March 4, 2002

By 

Michael Lipscomb (Bessemer, AL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Introducing Kant (Paperback)

I really do enjoy the "Introducing..." series of books. However this is a very poor installment. Unclear, jargon heavy and with examples that make obscure the concept discussed. Anyone new to Kant would be better served by "Introducing Philosophy" or "Introducing the Enlightenment".

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Useless and misleading. Go for *Kant: A Very Short Introduction* instead, April 3, 2008

By 

A Person - See all my reviews

This review is from: Introducing Kant (Paperback)

I got this book long ago before I really knew much about Kant, and I thought it was somewhat helpful though it left a lot of mysteries and loose ends. Now that I have studied Kant and read hundreds of pages of his texts, I can safely say that this book is, at best, murky and unhelpful, and at worst (which is quite often), extremely misleading. Except for the Categorical Imperative, this book does not motivate or explain the revolutionary character of any of Kant's ideas. For example, it tells you that Kant believed that the mind has innate categories in terms of which it interprets the world, but no attempt is made to explain what Kant means by these transcendental categories (e.g., that they are rules for combining representations) or the significance of this break with tradition. The other major problem with this book is that though Kant is a systematic philosopher if ever there was one, with all of his positions being intimately connected, this book treats Kantian ideas in isolation, saying almost nothing about how they relate to one another.

These faults are not due to the limitations of the format of a brief overview. Roger Scruton shows exactly how to summarize a complex and difficult philosopher in his *Kant: A Very Short Introduction*, which I strongly suggest instead of this book (Note: I like other books in the "Introducing..." series, so it's not that I'm against the comic book approach). Sure, there are no drawings in Scruton's book; instead you get words that actually tell you what you need to know.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kant as inaugural thinker of the post-modern condition, December 2, 2008

By 

Thomas A. Mcdonald (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Introducing Kant (Paperback)

The bad reviews of this book are unfortunate, but perhaps somewhat understandable as it is clearly an unorthodox reading of Kant, where one would expect the orthodox, traditional reading for an introductory text. However, I happen to find the writer's approach very refreshing, as the traditionalist readings of Kant tend to fail to convey contemporary relevance and thus fail to excite the reader about philosophical thinking.

This reading brings to life Kant's continuing relevance to philosophy across the board, but especially to the Continental, phenomenological, existential, deconstructive, etc. strands of thought. If you are familiar at all with Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, etc. and their reading of the history of Western metaphysics as a struggle with the concept of 'presence' -- a problem the Anglo-American Analytic tradition tends to misunderstand in their criticisms of phenomenological 'irrationalism' -- then you will find this book a redemption of 'boring old Kant', revealed here as the first thinker to address the problem of the concept of presence (and meaning) in a contemporary way. In this way the book is particularly revealing of the problematic many Continental thinkers have been dealing with (in their admittedly obscure languages) in light of their famous forebear.

In another review here by Mr. Joshua Malle, he recognizes and seems to personally appreciate the reading of Kant given in this book, but worries perhaps that it will be too difficult to comprehend for the poor, uninitiated masses who should get something more leveled down. Well, there really are plenty of other introductory titles that give the text-book introduction to Kant. I personally encountered this book before I had a broad grasp of the Continental tradition in general and I found that this book made me interested in Kant, and inspired me to read the other, traditional approaches to him as well.

It is often noted that Kant's 3rd Critique -- the Critique of Judgment -- can be read in either a conservative or radical manner for ultimate, metaphysical implications. The latter reading, which appreciates the affirmation of aesthetics, can be understood as the birthplace of what we now call the Continental tradition in philosophy. "Introducing Kant" by Want exemplifies the Continental tradition's reading of Kant as affirming the irreducibly aesthetic character of philosophical practice in the 3rd Critique.