Customer Reviews

Kant: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

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General Review of Book Series: I have to admit it: I am a fan of these little books. It's my dirty little secret. These short introductions provide one with a pocketsize, portable introduction to a wide variety of topics. With a light tone and a surface skim of the issues, these little guides provide one with the general overview one might expect in a small survey course. Naturally, there are downsides. Are these guides comprehensive? Heavens no! Do they take time to dig deeply into the issues? Not generally. But are they a good resource to use if you want to get your feet wet before you dive in? Yes. When used properly, these little guidebooks can allow what might start out as a casual curiosity to develop into a more in-depth research project. In fact, all of these introductions provide references and suggestions for further reading.

Roger Scruton's _A Very Short Introduction to Kant_ tackles a job that most writers would completely shy away from: to try and produce a short, readable summary of Kant's life, work, and influence. He has succeeded marvelously, carefully explaining difficult features of Kant's philosophy while noting the disagreements that occur in the scholarly literature. I found this text to be extremely helpful, not only for someone who would be approaching Kant for the first time, but also particularly for a student of Kant's philosophy that desires to have a short work to help synthesize everything.

After rehearsing a short, but interesting, biography of Kant's life and works, Scruton begins examining the ways in which Kant's thought can be seen as responding to the work of Leibniz and Descartes, exploring the possibilities of knowledge and the question of whether reality consists in subjective appearances or objective existence. Kant's arguments for synthetic, a priori knowledge are rehearsed in this section and the transcendental deduction is thoroughly reviewed. The next section concerns Kant's morality and his famous categorical imperative. A section on Kant's aesthetics follows and, finally, a chapter on Kant's political philosophy ends the book.

While reading this introduction, the reader gains an appreciation for just how broad Kant's philosophical interests were and Scruton does a remarkable job at revealing how Kant's basic principles help configure the rest of Kant's thought (be it morality, aesthetics, or politics). The effect of this is that by the end of the work, the reader has had these principles driven home and can formulate Kant's thought from them. This work may be a tad above the grasp of a casual reader who is not dedicated to the task of understanding it, but anyone who has some knowledge of the subject (or is determined) will benefit from reading this introduction. I highly recommend it.

These books are kinda hit or miss. This one hits. Bullseye. Along with the chapter on Kant in Will Durant's "The Story of Philosophy," this is most thorough-but-brief examination of Kant's Philosophy. I can't even fathom how he did it. Scruton takes care to be as clear as possible when deciphering Kant's original but highly technical idiolect. If you read this book carefully, and then approach Kant's highly involved philosophy: you will see the difference. But. You have to be in for the haul. You may need to reread passages. Kant's works, even when condensed like this, are still foreboding and require much focus and concentration. But he is worth it. Modern thought springs much from Kant's ideas: his influence, not only on 19th Century Philosophy, German Romanticism, and Religious philosophy is ineluctable. I was hooked from the second chapter, wherein Scruton places Kant in his context and illustrates the evolution of his thought. Leibniz's and Hume's influence is dealt with in a fantastic way- a consideration of both thinkers is necessary for a greater understanding.

I can't say enough good things. If anyone ever told me that a book of 135 pages of small print with good illustrations could deal effectively with a thinker of this magnitude and verbosity I'd laugh. And I'd have to eat that laughter. I'll say this, it makes Kant pleasurable. A pleasure to read and a greater pleasure to understand. I'd recommend this to anyone with any degree of interest in kant. As Scruton says in his preface, "Kant hope to draw the limits of human understanding; he found himself compelled to transcend them." Scruton's V.S.I. is an excellent testament to that vision.

There is no question that Scruton knows his Kant, and this book is a 5-star synopsis of Kant's major ideas, including some of the background and controversies surrounding them.

That said, I don't think it will succeed as a first introduction to Kant for most people. If you already know this material, or have known it sometime in the past and want to brush up, then this is the perfect book for you. If you are looking to learn about Kant's ideas for the first time, you are likely to find this book too compressed and telegraphic. I don't doubt that Scruton made a great effort, but it just may not be possible to introduce Kant in this number of pages. For a true introduction, I'd recommend Sebastian Gardner's guidebook in the Routledge series.

The book is good and Roger Scruton always has a free flowing beautiful style of writing. That said - almost the same content by the same author - plus three other philosophers, are in this book -
German Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche
and that is a better buy and would give a far better understanding of a bigger picture too.

Immanuel Kant is arguably one of the most influential, and yet most difficult to read, philosophers of all time. Roger Scruton does as good a job as it is reasonable to expect in this short introduction to Kant's work. The reader is given a bit of background to Kant's philosophy, and then is introduced to the transcendental deduction, the logic of illusion, the categorical imperative, as well as Kant's ideas on aesthetic and law. The booklet concludes with a few comments on the meaning and impact of Kant's "transcendental" philosophy. I must say that the section that gripped (yes, that is the right word!) me the most is chapter 7, "Enlightenment and Law," where Scruton comments on the role Kant had in developing modern concepts such as human rights and even the idea of a league of nations. Kant was an anti-utopian, in the sense that he did not believe that an ideal political system could actually be realized in practice, and indeed despised the violence of the then recent French revolution. (He would certainly not have approved of Bush's war to bring democracy to other countries.) But he was a man of the Enlightenment in the sense that he thought we still ought to strive toward such ideals, to keep them in mind as a guide to our behavior and our discussions about what is right and just. It makes for much food for thought even in modern times.

Scruton is able to pull off a brief but highly enlightening introduction of Kant. For those who find the perusal of the unabridged "Critique" a folly lacking in pure reason, this pocket sized gem seems the perfect answer. The size is rather deceptive when it comes to the density of matter it contains... It will definitely take focussed reading and a good deal of time to do justice to this book. Personally, I feel I myself haven't done enough of justice to this compact, loaded book.

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.

It's a pretty good introduction, I'd recommend reading several introductions to Kant before diving in (he's pretty dense). I think Goethe said that reading Kant was like walking into a well-lit room, I hardly think he was talking about Kant's dry, scholastic writing style. The clarity of his thought, however, is pretty intense. I do recommend this book, merely because jumping straight into Kant probably isn't going to fare well. When, and if, you do choose to read Kant, take a look at Jonathan Bennett's website (a philosopher and Kant scholar), I think he translates Kant into more readable English. Early Modern Texts or something. I agree with some of the other commentators, that this introduction is kinda hard for a first time look into Kant. A history of philosophy book might be your best bet to read first. It is pretty good for such a short introduction though. Take your time and don't do it in a day. Digest it. Good luck all.

Immanuel Kant's life work focused on solving the mistakes of the rationalist philosophy that he had learned from men, like Gottfried Leibnitz, and the mistakes of the empiricist philosophy that he was so intrigued with through the writings of David Hume. Kant wants to move beyond the mistakes both schools of philosophy made and synthesize their truths into a new philosophical understanding of knowledge. Rationalist philosophers held the view that all knowledge came from the exercise of reason alone, unpolluted by the view of any experience held by the observer. "Reality itself is accessible to reason alone, since only reason can rise above the individual point of view and participate in the vision of ultimate necessities, which is also God's." Thus, Leibnitz argues that human understanding contained certain innate principles known to be true, which when used with our ability to reason, could explain all questions in and of the world. Rationalists were convinced that experience was not a reliable tool to gain knowledge of the world. The rationalist method was very convincing and was the dominant school of philosophy in Kant's day. The criticism of rationalist philosophy was that you had to "trust" in reason to be able to deduce answers.

On the other hand, empiricist philosophers believed that knowledge of the world was only possible through learning by experience. Hume "denies the possibility of knowledge through reason, since reason cannot operate without ideas, and ideas are acquired only through the senses." Hume and other empiricist philosophers argued that without observing proof of something, the observer could not have knowledge of it. Knowledge of the world, for Hume, is knowledge of the world through the eyes of the observer. Hume argues that reason can only provide relationships between ideas; reason cannot produce ideas on its own or provide facts. Hume was even distrustful of the writings and teachings of others being capable of providing answers. "The only experience that can confirm anything for me is my experience." Hume's skepticism even rises to the level of doubting the existence of self. Thus, Hume earns the moniker of "the Great Skeptic." Hume's skepticism is in direct contradiction to the rationalist philosopher, Rene Descartes, whose rationalist investigations led him to utter the famous words, "Cogito, ergo sum, I think, therefore I am." The criticism of empiricist philosophy is that we can be sure of so little, since one can actually prove through direct observation so little in the world. For Kant, Hume puts so much of scientific thought into question since Hume doubts the concept of causality occurring in nature. Thus, Kant says it was Hume who "awoke him from his dogmatic slumbers." Kant so desperately wants to solve the philosophical dichotomy between these two schools.

Kant believes that both schools make the same fundamental mistake in their approach to the question of epistemology. He argued that philosophers were essentially asking the wrong question, which was, how we can bring ourselves to understand the world. Kant said the real question to ask was how the world comes to be understood by us. Kant will solve this dichotomy between the two schools in his first book Critique of Pure Reason.

This was required reading for a graduate course in the Humanities. Recommended reading for anyone interested in history, psychology, philosophy, and literature.

This book offers a clear and concise introduction to one of the most difficult philosophers. This book, and others in the series, are excellent preparation for an undergraduate class. Scruton is a little conservative in his analysis of Kant's work. The reader should be aware that he is definitely of the analytic strain.