Customer Reviews

Kant (Past Masters)

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I don't know who foisted off the job of introducing Kant to the intellectual masses, but the could not have chosen better. My teeth hurt when I think about introducing Kant to neophytes. I still don't know how he did it, because I can't explain Kant to anyone without having them instantly MEGO (my eyes glaze over) and run crying to thre corner of the room.

There is a lot that could be called contentious in this book (too much to go into) but that isn't a bad point about any book on Kant- there are no uncontentious books on Kant except biographies. All told, what I disagree with Scruton on is overshadowed by the mass of things he got right or even better than I have (no mean feat).

It is assured Scruton's interpretations of Kant will become mainstream simply because he is the only man alive to make immediately intelligable sense of the man. Remember, Kant was the man HL Mencken attributed the incredibly funny comment

"Kant was the worst writer on earth before Marx. He had many ideas, and some of them quite simple, but he always managed to make them seem unintelligable. I hope he is in hell"

Scruton's book on Kant is, in my view, the best book available on Kant if the goal is to get a quick overview of the philosopher's "Critical System." This is a short and concise book and it does the impossible: summarize Kant's three critiques (of Pure Reason, of Practical Reason and of Judgment) in a pocket-sized book. And it is very readable. I generally really enjoy Scruton's writings; he is one of the few commentators who can write about philosophical matters in an understandable fashion for the common reader. This is doubly amazing since Scruton himself is a first rate philosopher...

This book may serve as both an introduction to Kant or, for those with interest but little time to tackle Kant, an excellent summary of the key arguments that made Kant famous. Scruton is in obvious awe of Kant's contribution to philosophty (rightly so) and astonishingly presents Kant without a lot of the impenetrable phrases Kant cooked up to explain himself.

This is a very easy to read introduction to Kant's philosophy. I'm in Catholic seminary, and we read Kant's Prolegomena and his Foundations for the Metaphysics of Morals. Reading the direct texts was difficult. I ordered this little gem of a philosophy book from Amazon.com, and it clarified many questions I still had about Kant. I highly encourage philosophy students to buy it.

I recently read Scruton's "Kant" after being away from philosophy for many years, and was fascinated by Scruton's presentation of Kant's philosophy. Scruton is obviously a master teacher, and I wish I had this book when I was an undergraduate attempting to read The Critique of Pure Reason. This book is an excellent introduction to Kant.

I once had a physics teacher the late Dave Levinstein of blessed memory who when asked by a student about relativity theory said the following; "I read some of that Einstein stuff, but the truth is , I didn't get it." That's very much the way I feel about a lot of this book. I did read with interest Scruton's account of Kant's life in which it turns out that the man his neighbors set their clocks by was also a quite sociable human being, and very much appreciated by his local townspeople. Kant who came from a poor family and who worked very hard all his life worked himself up in the system from private teacher to professor. He was an enormously popular lecturer, who drew standing room crowds. His heart was above all in metaphysics, but he also lectured at many other subjects including astronomy . Scruton says that he is the most important philosopher of modernity, and in purely philosophical ( philosophers between philosophers) terms this may be correct. He is not however a very congenial writer, and reading him trying to paraphrase his abstractions into your own. I have tried 'The Critique of Pure Reason' a few times and never really felt I was getting it. How liberating it is after reading Kant to read a great literary stylist like Nietzsche. In any case in this short work Scruton does outline and summarize the three great critiques. He shows how Kant's religious position in a certain way grows out of his Aesthetics and his sense of something sublime and transcendent. He underlines the Kantian position that it is the categories of our mind which shape our experience, and it is our experience which we know. And this means 'Reality- in - Itself' is transcendent and beyond our own apprehension.
This work seems to me a good introduction and summary. But again I do not feel I really understand Kant, at least not in any depth. The happy philosophical reader however might gain in understanding through reading and rereading this small work.

Kant is one of those modern philosophers whose presence looms large over much of what has been achieved over the past couple of centuries in modern philosophy, and yet he is not very likely to be read in most introductory philosophy classes. Part of the difficulty lies with Kant's highly technical and oftentimes convoluted use of language, which gave even his contemporaries who were native German speakers some difficulties. The philosophers and scholars have since had a chance to debate, oftentimes vehemently, the "true" meaning of Kant's works and it is unlikely that those debates will end any time soon. With such formidable baggage, it would be very difficult for an absolute novice in philosophy to just plunge into Kant's work and start reading it on its own. A good first exposition by an expert is invaluable and this thin volume serves exactly such purpose. It does a remarkable job of delineating the scope of Kant's thought and bringing this philosopher to life for the new generation of readers.

This book is NOT accessible - except for those with a degree in Philosophy, perhaps. The high reviews likely come from people not willing to admit this book is simply confusing. It simply tries to cover far too much information in too few of pages. It does not make nearly enough use of examples. It does not break down complex concepts into understandable concepts.