Kant, Immanuel

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a good translation
seminal work of the greatest of philosophers
Poor translation
A Very Poor Translation
A foundation stone for modern philosophy

Critique of Pure Reason
Immanuel Kant
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Practical Philosophy

ASIN: 0521657296

Book Description

This entirely new translation of Critique of Pure Reason is the most accurate and informative English translation ever produced of this epochal philosophical text. Though its simple, direct style will make it suitable for all new readers of Kant, the translation displays a philosophical and textual sophistication that will enlighten Kant scholars as well. This translation recreates as far as possible a text with the same interpretative nuances and richness as the original.

Customer Reviews:

a good translation.......2007-03-23

I find this translation straightforward and transparent, in that one is not forced to disentangle the philosophical content from the personal idiosyncracies of the author and/or translator. I do not read German, so I am unable to compare with the original, but whether Kant intended it or not, he himself, as an individual with a particular voice, disappears from the work, leaving only the philosophy. This "effect," when the philosophy takes over and the individual disappears, I find very helpful, especially so in regard to a work this complex. Highly recommended, as is the Guyer Critique of Judgement. I have not read the C. of Practical Reason yet, but it is most likely of comparable quality. These are obviously my opinions, as are the statements of other reviewers.

seminal work of the greatest of philosophers.......2006-10-05

I am an avid reader of philosophical books and without any doubt i consider Immanuel Kant as the greatest mind who has ever written on such abstract subjects.This work is a real copernican revolution,putting forth the structure of our cognitive systems and the way we perceive the world around us.At least it changed my own worldview,making me recognize that i am the creator of my thoughts and not a simple observer.For this reason i consider it one of the most important books i have ever read.

Poor translation.......2006-07-05

I read the long but fruitful review about the results of different translations of this text. So I went to my in-law who is German and she read a few paragraphs from the German. When I showed her the parallel text in English by Guyer and Wood, she was appalled at how inaccurate it was. She said the German was beautiful prose whereas the translation was aweful and didn't reflect the style of the German at all. She thought that the NK Smith was good English, but that it wasn't very accurate either. Unfortunately, I didn't get her opinion on the other translations.

The only reason I can think of for Cambridge using the utterly untalented efforts of Guyer and Wood is because of their privileged chairs in their respective University. Once again, power and privileged has done the public disservice in the academic world.

A Very Poor Translation.......2005-12-20

Please note that I am reviewing only the Guyer-Wood translation, not the work itself.

There are four previous English translations of this work: Francis Haywood (1838, revised 1848); JMD Meiklejohn (1855); F Max Müller (1881, revised 1896); and NK Smith (1929). All of these (save the first) have considerable merit. Meiklejohn shows considerable skill in making Kant speak idiomatic English. As Müller points out, however, Meiklejohn not infrequently flounders in Kant's monstrous gothic sentences, and loses the thread of meaning. As a native German speaker and scholar of language, Müller's 1881 version set the standard for this work for intelligibility, clarity, and readability.

Smith's version has been standard for many years, but even a cursory comparison of Smith with Müller will show that the latter often has a clearer grasp of the German, and provides a better expression of the key concepts. Smith had also come under the influence of the radical neo-Kantians, and his translation suffers severely from that.

Prospective readers of a great philosopher's work come to the work with certain expectations. They have the right to expect - nay demand - prose that reflects that greatness. Kant's great work is a work of literature, and must be respected as any other work of literature. He often employs literary devices (such as metaphor) to make his point clearer. Sensitivity to idiomatic English style must be paramount in the translation of so difficult a work as this.

In short: Translating a work of this kind calls for special talents. Guyer and Wood, unfortunately, do not possess these talents.

They have no credentials in literary translation, translation theory, or semiotics. Despite this, they have installed themselves as General Editors of the Cambridge Kant translation series.

They expressly affirm that they have tried not to 'interpret' as they translate, but to translate 'literally', and leave interpretation to the reader. The difficulty is that such a stance is ideological, rather than practical, and as such it is unsupportable.

Their translation follows the original in a slavish, word-for-word fashion. The results are wooden and unnatural, and often unintelligible. For a truly successful translation of a work such as this, it is absolutely necessary to interpret, and to rewrite the interpretation in idiomatic English, specifically late 18th-century philosophical English. Often, complete reconstruction of the sentence is necessary. Guyer and Wood never do this, and are in fact incapable of doing this.

There is no excuse for allowing a translation to be unintelligible or unidiomatic. If there are textual problems in the original (and in this text there are many) the translator must attempt to resolve them. Simply passing them along for the reader to dispose of (even though the reader may be utterly incapable of 'interpreting' the resulting gibberish), in the name of 'accuracy', is a mistaken notion. It does no-one any good. The translator, not the author, will be blamed.

As a consequence, the Guyer-Wood translation is the worst ever of this work, except for the very first one from 1838, by Francis Haywood, and for the same reasons, cited by JMD Meiklejohn in his translation of the Critique, published in 1855. Speaking of Haywood's primitive, literal, word-for-word approach, Meiklejohn remarks:

"A translator ought to be an interpreting intellect between the author and the reader; but in this case the only interpreting medium has been the dictionary."

The same can be said of the Guyer and Wood translation. It is interesting that Guyer and Wood, in their preface, praise the very Haywood translation denounced by Meiklejohn, because (they say) it was so 'literal' (folks, I'm not making this up!).

This is quite revealing of the incompetence of these two translators. The best translation of this work was that of F. Max Müller, in 1881/1896. How do I know? I checked them all!

For example, the Guyer-Wood team show their insensitivity to English usage by translating the expression "gewöhnliches Schicksal" as "customary fate", which is un-idiomatic and totally absurd. 'Fate' has nothing to do with 'custom'; in fact, this is an oxymoron. Fate has to do with things that are beyond men's control. What is 'customary' has to do with what men habitually do. (The correct choices include "usual fate" or perhaps "common fate".) This absurdity appears to be a direct consequence of Guyer and Wood's stated preference for using a single English term to render a single German term. But it results in absurdities like 'customary fate'.

Translation of one language into another requires thought and interpretation. It is not a mechanical process. The words are not numbers that can be processed as if through a computer, though Guyer and Wood approach it that way. For that reason, Guyer and Wood simply have no business translating anything. They are incompetent; among other things, they import medieval meanings into Kant's text, something for which they have no legitimate basis. This work demands a sensitivity to language, and an ability to write in an English style that is readable. Guyer and Wood lack that ability.

They have stated that their translation is intended for academics and scholars. No translation, though, can ever take the place of the original for scholarly purposes, no matter how carefully and scrupulously the work is performed. Translations are suitable only for introductory to intermediate classes. Anyone attempting serious study of a work of this kind must refer to the original, and that means learning to cope with Kant's somewhat idiosyncratic German.

Because Guyer and Wood do not understand the limitations of the process of translation, their work is misguided. That in turn has led them to make unfortunate choices in their translation. For this reason, and because they themselves have no apparent literary talent, this translation cannot be recommended.

----------NOT RECOMMENDED------------

A foundation stone for modern philosophy.......2005-10-09

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is considered one of the giants of philosophy, of his age or any other. It is largely this book that provides the foundation of this assessment. Whether one loves Kant or hates him (philosophically, that is), one cannot really ignore him; even when one isn't directly dealing with Kantian ideas, chances are great that Kant is made an impact.

Kant was a professor of philosophy in the German city of Konigsberg, where he spent his entire life and career. Kant had a very organised and clockwork life - his habits were so regular that it was considered that the people of Konigsberg could set their clocks by his walks. The same regularity was part of his publication history, until 1770, when Kant had a ten-year hiatus in publishing. This was largely because he was working on this book, the 'Critique of Pure Reason'.

Kant as a professor of philosophy was familiar with the Rationalists, such as Descartes, who founded the Enlightenment and in many ways started the phenomenon of modern philosophy. He was also familiar with the Empiricist school (John Locke and David Hume are perhaps the best known names in this), which challenged the rationalist framework. Between Leibniz' monads and Hume's development of Empiricism to its logical (and self-destructive) conclusion, coupled with the Romantic ideals typified by Rousseau, the philosophical edifice of the Enlightenment seemed about to topple.

Kant rode to the rescue, so to speak. He developed an idea that was a synthesis of Empirical and Rationalist ideas. He developed the idea of a priori knowledge (that coming from pure reasoning) and a posterior knowledge (that coming from experience) and put them together into synthetic a priori statements as being possible. Knowledge, for Kant, comes from a synthesis of pure reason concepts and experience. Pure thought and sense experience were intertwined. However, there were definite limits to knowledge. Appearance/phenomenon was different from Reality/noumena - Kant held that the unknowable was the 'ding-an-sich', roughly translated as the 'thing-in-itself', for we can only know the appearance and categorial aspects of things.

Kant was involved heavily in scientific method, including logic and mathematical methods, to try to describe the various aspects of his development. This is part of what makes Kant difficult reading for even the most dedicated of philosophy students and readers. He spends a lot of pages on logical reasoning, including what makes for fallacious and faulty reasoning. He also does a good deal of development on the ideas of God, the soul, and the universe as a whole as being essentially beyond the realm of this new science of metaphysics - these are not things that can be known in terms of the spatiotemporal realm, and thus proofs and constructs about them in reason are bound to fail.

Kant does go on to attempt to prove the existence of God and the soul (and other things) from moral grounds, but that these cannot be proved in the scientific methodology of his metaphysics and logic. This book presents Kant's epistemology and a new concept of metaphysics that involves transcendental knowledge, a new category of concepts that aims to prove one proposition as the necessary presupposition of another. This becomes the difficulty for later philosophers, but it does become a matter that needs to be addressed by them.

As Kant writes at the end of the text, 'The critical path alone is still open. If the reader has had the courtesy and patience to accompany me along this path, he may now judge for himself whether, if he cares to lend his aid in making this path into a high-road, it may not be possible to achieve before the end of the present century what many centuries have not been able to accomplish; namely, to secure for human reason complete satisfacton in regard to that with which it has all along so eagerly occupied itself, though hitherto in vain.' This is heavy reading, but worthwhile for those who will make the journey with Kant.

Kant's Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense

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helpful
Eloquent defense
Who is Allison-Grier?
There's a new edition!
Where intrepreting Kant on knowledge should begin

Kant's Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense
Henry E. Allison
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0300102666

Book Description

This landmark book is now reissued in a new edition that has been vastly rewritten and updated to respond to recent Kantian literature. It includes a new discussion of the Third Analogy, a greatly expanded discussion of Kant's Paralogisms, and entirely new chapters dealing with Kant's theory of reason, his treatment of theology, and the important Appendix to the Dialectic.

Customer Reviews:

helpful.......2006-11-10

even though i disagree with allison's interpretation of kant, he spells everything out clearly. this book was a help to an undergraduate course i took on kant.

Eloquent defense.......2006-08-21

Henry Allison is quite rightly regarded as a legendary Kant scholar, and his service in countering the dominant Anglo-American criticisms of Kant is noble indeed. This remains a very important book after so many years. I am only sorry that he spent so much time dealing with arguments that are often unworthy of consideration. For students wending their way through the thickets of the Kant literature, this book simply must be studied with care.

Who is Allison-Grier?.......2006-03-28

Allison announces in his first sentence of his Preface that this, the 2nd edition of a book originally published in 1983 is "substantially revised," and so it is, especially the last half of it. It was an important work of scholarship 23 years ago, and a revision after so much time during which he has remained a teacher and scholar specializing in Kant, was bound to excite broad interest. It must have gone far toward gaining for him the prestigious prize of $30,000 he was awarded last year (2005) for outstanding Kantian scholarship.

In the preface Allison cites Michelle Grier as having awakened him from his dogmatic slumbers. In the body of the text he mentions her name only once, but given the compliment to her, my curiosity was aroused. First I looked at the endnotes in which her work was mentioned by Allison, and then, a little puzzled, I looked carefully over her book, Kant's Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion, published in 2001. I found many citations of her work in the endnotes. Adding them up, I found that there were 28 endnotes, these referred, by explicit citation, to 200 pages of her 305 page book. What one finds in comparing the two books, his and hers, is that every idea or argument that Allison advances and almost every reference, citation to Kant or to other philosophers, supposition, hypothesis, or development is to be found explicitly in Grier. It is impossible to compare the two books and not conclude that Allison had no new ideas of his own at all, at least for the last half of his book, the half that he claims developments in Kantian scholarship had compelled him to fully and carefully rethink and therefore to have most fully revised. If one were to remove from Allison's book, however, the ideas, arguments, and so forth that he derived directly and unambiguously from Grier, there would be nothing but minor and for the most part exceedingly trivial asides. It would, to put it simply, not have been publishable.

It is apparent that rather than generously recognizing Michelle Grier by his compliments and endnotes, he was stabbing her in the back. His "generous" remarks have the effect of diminishing her role in his accomplishment. He makes it seem as though she inspired him or set him on the right track rather than to have fashioned the final intellectual product that he merely, but arrogantly, rephrased. Nowhere does he acknowledge the incontestable truth, as of course he cannot, that he was himself entirely empty, and given a choice between remaining silent or stealing from the younger, creative scholar, Michelle Grier, the work he wished he had produced himself, he chose the shabbier but more profitable course.

There's a new edition!.......2004-10-30

This is a very good commentary on the Critique of Pure Reason that usually interprets it in the most charitable way. If you're out for economy, buy a used copy of this--but be aware that there is a new, considerably expanded edition of this book that Allison has put out, and the changes are worth the money.

Where intrepreting Kant on knowledge should begin.......2004-06-24

Allison's masterful and now classic work brings back the long ignored importance of the notion of intuition into Kant scholarship. Allison sees that only by beginning with intuition can the totality of Kant's epistemology be properly framed. Allison's work is a colossal advancement in the literature. (See also Allison's earlier _The Kant-Eberhard Controvery_.)

Kant: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy)

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great introduction, expensive version
Cornerstone of Modern Ethical Thinking
It is Imperative to read this...
Moral Philosophy
One of the Great Works in Moral Philosophy

Kant: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy)
Immanuel Kant
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0521626951

Book Description

Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals ranks alongside Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics as one of the most profound and influential works in moral philosophy ever written. In Kant's own words its aim is to search for and establish the supreme principle of morality, the categorical imperative. This edition presents the acclaimed translation of the text by Mary Gregor, together with an introduction by Christine M. Korsgaard that examines and explains Kant's argument.

Customer Reviews:

great introduction, expensive version.......2006-02-25

This version of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals provides a clear and concise introduction. You will find it useful to understand how Kant's moral philosophy fits within his general philosophy and to get acquainted with some of the debates around his work. Although this book is rather expensive for what it is, it is useful and worth buying if you are really interested in this topic.

Cornerstone of Modern Ethical Thinking.......2005-10-31

'Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals' by Immanuel Kant is easily the most important work devoted exclusively to thinking about morality in the history of Philosophy, especially considering it's size.

The cornerstone of the work, and the end result of Kant's analysis is the categorical imperative which says that a moral law are only those for which you can state should be true of all people.

In one fell swoop, Kant marginalizes all thinking about relativism in morality and at the same time distinguishes moral from religious thinking.

If you pair this up with St. Paul's statements in his letter to the Romans (3:19-28) which states strongly that adherance to the law has virtually nothing to do with salvation, it should make things pretty clear to all concerned.

Unfortunately, things are rarely that simple. As important as Kant's conclusion is, it is necessary but not sufficient for a complete analysis of morality.

One excuse may be that this work is really Kant's version of 'Cliff Notes' to his moral argument. His full presentation comes in the 'Critique of Practical Reason', which, however, is not often read.

Note that contrary to another review of this edition, the translator and commentator is the noted Kant scholar of 70 years ago, H. J. Paton.

To people who are not used to reading philosophy, I will not hide the fact that Kant is tough going. He may not be quite as tough as Hegel, the Existentialists, or the ancient Greeks, but he is definitely harder to understand than any modern nonfiction book I can think of.

The biggest argument against the 'Groundwork' and the categorical imperative is usually the fact that it does not rule out trivial rules, such as 'you must always eat a starch at least once a day'. This rule is physically possible for anyone living anywhere in the world, yet it is certainly not a moral law. It is not even a very good dietary law, but that's neither here nor there. A second argument is that Kant's argument seems a bit circular, when he says that the only thing which unqualifiedly good is a good will.

For anyone who has been vexed by moral questions, an honest reading of this work will at the very least give you hope that with the right amount of thought, one can make sense of moral issues.

A truly great book.

It is Imperative to read this..........2005-10-07

As translator H.J. Paton states in his introduction, 'Kant's "Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals" is one of the small books which are truly great' despite the unapproachability of the title. Many rank this book alongside Aristotle's 'Ethics' and Plato's 'Republic'. Its main topic is the supremacy of morals and moral action, and Paton gives a section by section analysis of Kant's book. The purpose of this work is not to work out all of the implications and difficulties with the a priori part of ethics, but rather to set a foundation of the supreme principle of morality.

The centerpiece of the Groundwork is Kant's most famous proposition, the Categorical Imperative. While this is often equated with the Golden Rule (do unto others as you would have them do unto you), the Categorical Imperative argues for a more universal set of moral action - for example, if one does not mind being lied to, then lying does not become a problem, according to the Golden Rule, but for Kant, this would be unacceptable as it is a violation of the rational principles of what morals are.

Kant proceeds to look at issues of law, duty, free will and the good will, and autonomy of action. Kant argues strongly for the need for philosophy to guard against whim, taste and personal desire from becoming normative agents in the way we construct the moral universe. He argue for objective principles to govern the will, and categorises these as either hypothetical or categorical. 'All imperatives command either hypothetically or categorically. Hypothetical imperatives declare a possible action to be practically necessary as a means to the attainment of something else that one wills (or that one may will). A categorical imperative would be one which represented an action as objectively necessary in itself apart from its relation to a further end.'

Kant goes from this discussion to the formulation of universal law and the way in which rational agents should formulate and view this kind of law. The final section of this work introduces ideas that will be more fully developed in Kant's 'Critique of Practical Reason', the second of his three-volume Critiques. He also covers some of the arguments from 'Critique of Pure Reason', but not very fully; as Paton states in his analysis, 'Kant cannot assume the elaborate arguments of the "Critique of Pure Reason" to be familiar to his readers nor can he attempt to repeat these elaborate arguments in a short treatise on ethics.' The finite, rational person must regard himself or herself both as a member of the world of experience/perception and also as a member of the world of ideas/rationality. This is the essence of the Empiricist/Rationalist split that Kant synthesises together in the first Critique.

This is not easy going - the original 'Groundwork' had 128 pages, contained here in less than 100 (allowing for type-face differences as well as translation). Paton's version has 40 pages of analysis, endnotes, an index, and a statement about the translation - it is the 40 pages of analysis, keyed to section-by-section sequence, that makes this a very useful edition. This is perhaps the best first text of Kant to read to get a sense of his style, thought, and the foundation of what has become known as his most important principle.

Moral Philosophy.......2005-07-29

Immanuel Kant is truly one of the most influential moral philosophers in history; and with this book, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, he positioned himself far further.
In this book you will find things to be deeply contemplated, about "good will", the moral value of conduct and its metaphysical aspects.
This translation of the Kant's original Grundlegung von Metaphysik der Sitten to English is quiet easy to understand, so it is relatively an easy-reading book.

One of the Great Works in Moral Philosophy.......2004-03-02

Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals is probably the single most influential work of philosophical ethics since Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics. While Kant himself considered this a sort of introduction to ethical thinking, it's come to be his most influential and widely read work on ethics. Despite its length--it's less than a hundred pages--this is a work of remarkable depth and intellectual insight.

This isn't an easy work, however. It needs to be read and re-read (and, I suppose, re-read) to be fully understood and appreciated. I've never found Kant as difficult and obscure as his reputation would suggest, but as a writer of philosophical prose he's certainly not the caliber of, say, Hume or Descartes. As many have noted, Kant is the first great philosopher of the modern era to have been an academic, and it shows. He writes long, meandering sentences, and the organization of his works leaves quite a bit to be desired. Furthermore, his penchant for arcane terminology and architechtonic can make his work seem more forbidding than it is. Still, Kant's ideas in the Groundwork, while subtle and sometimes elusive, are profound and original, and this book is a must-read for anyone interested in philosophical ethics. I should also note that the importance of this book isn't solely historical since there has been a recent resurgence of Kantian moral thinking in the English-speaking world.

Kant's aim in the Groundwork is to discover the fundamental principle of morality. In the first section he attempts to derive this fundamental principle from ordinary moral thought. In particular, he attempts to derive this principle from considerations concerning what is unconditionally good. Kant claims that the only thing that is unconditionally good is a good will. Moreover, its goodness is not a matter of the results of acting on a good will; it is good in itself. As a matter of fact, Kant claims that the results of an action done with a good will and the aims and inclinations of the agent with the good will are morally insignificant.

What, then, is it to act with a good will? It is, Kant argues, a matter of doing one's duty for duty's sake, regardless of one's feeling and the results of doing so. What is it to act from duty's sake? It is to act from principles that accord with the fundamental principle of morality. And here we get the first formulation of the fundamental principle of morality: act only on maxims that you can consistently will to be universal laws. In other words, if one is unable to will the principle of one's action to become a universal law, the action is morally impermissible.

In the second section of the Groundwork Kant attempts to draw the same conclusion from some philosophical points about the nature of duty. He begins by claiming that our knowledge of our duty is a priori and based on the exercise of reason. He then argues that facts about our duties are necessary facts, and that this shows that they must be based on a categorical imperative: that is, that our duties apply to us insofar as we are rational beings, irrespective of the contingent aspects of their nature. And, Kant argues, the one categorical imperative is the fundamental principle of morality mentioned above. He then applies this principle to some examples in order to display just how it grounds our duties in particular cases.

The rest of the second section is filled with lots of interesting, albeit abstruse, ideas. First, Kant attempts to ground the categorical imperative in something that is of unconditional worth. What is that something? The existence of rational beings, which, he says, is an end in itself. And this leads to a second formulation of the categorical imperative: (ii) act only in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in the person of yourself or someone else, as an end and never merely as a means.

This section also includes a third formulation of the categorical imperative: (iii) act only on maxims that you could will to become universal laws legislated by your own will. This formulation encapsulates Kant's claim that we can achieve autonomy only by acting in accordance with the moral law. Conformity with the moral law does not constrain our freedom since we legislate the moral law for ourselves. The moral law is not forced on us from without; its source is to be found in our own rational nature. Indeed, it is only by acting morally that we are able to achieve genuine freedom by transcending the contingent desires and inclinations that are beyond our control.

Of course, that doesn't come close to summing up the Groundwork. But it's a start.

Gregor's translation of Kant's text is fairly clear. She does her best to render Kant's work in readable English prose, and she usually succeeds in this endeavor. I also think Kant's main ideas come through pretty well in this translation. Moreover, this is likely to become something like the standard edition of Kant's Groundwork in the future, since this translation is the one that appears in the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant.

The Cambridge Companion to Kant (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy)
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False advertising

Excellent first step

Excellent Collection!

A necessary corrective for the Anglo-Saxon Kantian fallacies

The Cambridge Companion to Kant (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy)

Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0521367689

Book Description

The fundamental task of philosophy since the seventeenth century has been to determine whether the essential principles of both knowledge and action can be discovered by human beings unaided by an external agency. No one philosopher contributed more to this enterprise than Kant, whose Critique of Pure Reason (1781) shook the very foundations of the intellectual world. Kant argued that the basic principles of the natural sciences are imposed on reality by human sensibility and understanding, and thus that human beings are also free to impose their own free and rational agency on the world. This volume is the only systematic and comprehensive account of the full range of Kant's writings available, and the first major overview of his work to be published in more than a dozen years. An internationally recognized team of Kant scholars explore Kant's conceptual revolution in epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of science, moral and political philosophy, aesthetics, and the philosophy of religion. The volume also traces the historical origins and consequences of Kant's work.

Customer Reviews:

False advertising.......2006-08-21

Far from the promised "convenient, accessible guide" to Kant for "new readers and nonspecialists," this is merely a loose collection of papers by Anglo-American Kant scholars. While a few of the papers might interest those in that circumscribed group, this book is both useless to the unintiated and often susbstandard to those who know Kant well.

Excellent first step.......2005-12-05

This book should be your first step when writing about or reading Kant. It is clear and insightful and will save you ALOT of time. I write a paper on Kant's Aesthetic Theory and this book saved me hours of sifting through the three critiques.

Excellent Collection!.......2002-10-06

If you're studying Kant for a college course, on your own, or as a scholar, this collection is quite excellent. Guyer is a major Kant interpreter, and so this anthology represents some of the best work in the field. I highly recommend this.

Guyer's article here is excellent. And so is Schaper's on the Third Critique.

I also recommend: Allison, Transcendental Idealism (for a sympathetic defense of Kant); Strawson, Bounds of Sense (critical); Bennett, K's Analytic (critical); Forster, Transcendental Deductions (Stanford UP); and Kitcher, K's CPR (Rowman/Littlefield). A current biography of Kant is: M. Kuehn, Kant (Cambridge UP, now in paperback).

A necessary corrective for the Anglo-Saxon Kantian fallacies.......2000-08-07

Paul Guyer has done a great service to Kantian studies with his judicious editing of this anthology of essays on Kant's philosophy. By showing the balance between Kant's rationalistic background and his response to the English empiricists, the essays refute the common Anglo-American fallacy of viewing Kant as arbitrarily imposing categorical types on the objects of experience. The article on Kant's pre-critical development and philosophy is worth the price of the book alone.

Religion and Rational Theology (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant in Translation)

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Imprescindible

Religion and Rational Theology (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant in Translation)
Immanuel Kant , Allen W. Wood , and George di Giovanni
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Practical Philosophy
Lectures on Ethics (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant in Translation)
Critique of the Power of Judgment (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant in Translation)
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Critique of Pure Reason

ASIN: 0521799988

Book Description

This volume collects for the first time in a single volume all of Kant's writings on religion and rational theology. These works were written during a period of conflict between Kant and the Prussian authorities over his religious teachings. The historical context and progression of this conflict are charted in the general introduction to the volume and in the translators' introductions to particular texts. All the translations are new with the exception of The Conflict of the Faculties, where the translation has been revised and redited to conform to the guidelines of the Cambridge Edition.

Customer Reviews:

Imprescindible.......2006-01-25

Every serious scholar in Kant or Theology must owe this superb volume. It contains many unknown and important works in order to achieve a complete and accurate vision of Kant's moral theory and his philosophy of religion, as well as his whole system of philosophy, developed throughout the three Critiques. Kant himself delimited his philosophical project in the formulations of these three questions: "What can I know" --What I ought to do? and -What am I to expect? (CPR A 804/ B 832). Kant told that the last question, the theological one, was to be answer in "The religion within the limits of mere reason" of 1793 (AK 11: 414), a monumental work that makes clear several issues being somehow murky for the readers of the Groundwork and the Critique of the Pure reason, such as the value of the faith, the intelligible grounds of free will and the relation between morals and traditional religion.

Kant: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

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Only 4 stars because any short introduction doesn't give Kant his due
Making Sense of Genius
Great intro to Kant
Heroic Attempt by Scruton
Excellent introduction to Kant

Kant: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
Roger Scruton
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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ASIN: 0192801996

Book Description

Kant is arguably the most influential modern philosopher, but also one of the most difficult. Roger Scruton tackles his exceptionally complex subject with a strong hand, exploring the background to Kant's work and showing why the Critique of Pure Reason has proved so enduring.

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Only 4 stars because any short introduction doesn't give Kant his due.......2007-05-13

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.

Making Sense of Genius.......2007-03-08

Kant is clearly one of the 4 or 5 most influential thinkers of the last half-century, however, the complexity of his ideas combined with an often difficult writing style (for modern readers) makes for a difficult study. In order to get the most out of Kant (or to get through him at all, for that matter), it is essential to read and study modern introductions and commentaries first. This "very short introduction" is an excellent example. It is concise, highly readable, and a good beginning for more detailed study. However, it is still not enough to allow one to tackle Kant immediately and I suggest further introductory study.

Great intro to Kant.......2006-12-16

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.

Heroic Attempt by Scruton.......2006-04-15

This is an heroic attempt by Scruton to summarize the entire philosophy of one the most important thinkers of all time. Unfortunately, Kant was also one of the worst writers of all time and needlessly made his own great insights almost incomprehensible to the casual reader. Scruton does a wonderful job of making Kant clear.

Excellent introduction to Kant.......2006-03-15

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.

Fallen Freedom: Kant on Radical Evil and Moral Regeneration

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Fallen Freedom: Kant on Radical Evil and Moral Regeneration
Jr, Gordon E. Michalson
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ASIN: 0521383978

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This work offers a clear exposition of evil and moral regeneration as they appear in Kant's late work Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone. Michalson examines a doctrine of "radical evil" which he sees as strongly resembling the Christian doctrine of original sin. In the author's view, Kant compromises his position as a result of this throwback to the Christian tradition, which is at odds with some of the basic tenets of the Enlightenment. Kant is thus seen to be deeply ambivalent in the philosophy he puts forward when he talks about divine action, on the one hand, and human autonomy, on the other.

Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (Studies in Continental Thought)

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FALSE DEPTH
systematic and technical Heidegger
Easily among Heidegger's best works
The origin of Deconstruction. Read before `Being and Time'.
Being and Time, Part II

Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (Studies in Continental Thought)
Martin Heidegger
Manufacturer: Indiana University Press
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Introduction to Metaphysics (Yale Nota Bene)

ASIN: 0253210674

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FALSE DEPTH.......2007-05-11

This is absolutely the worst book I've ever read about Kant, it has nothing to do with his doctrine, and it falls in deliberated distortions about the essence of critical thought. The main task of Heidegger is embodied in a struggle against german idealism (specifically advanced enlightenment), so the main purpose for this book will be to dissolve heterogeneity (superiority) of understanding (over) and sense, appealing on a famous Kantian passage that more or less says "there exist two logs of knowledge, the ones are coming probably from a common root, but unknown for us" (KrV B 29). In his pretension, Heidegger claims to discover this "common root" (considered in german idealism as the last unity of a dialectical process, then, a rational one) in time, specifically, in the doctrine of the self-affection as it is exposed in the transcendental aesthetics (KrV B 67), so, his main thesis can be found in paragraph n° 34, there, Heidegger says: "Time, and the 'I think', doesn't confront themselves now as incompatibles and heterogeneous, nevertheless, they are the same", and further he adds "pure sensibility (time) and pure reason not only are homogeneous, moreover they own to the unity of the same essence". All the book is ever enclosing to this thesis (as it was offered in Being and Time, not in the KrV), of course on different ways, as for example, in his treating on the concepts of ontology, intuitus originaria, metaphysica generalis, finiteness of human knowledge, schematism, etc... And this thesis was far before offered to us by Erich Adickes and the realistic interpretations.

But the fact is that this has nothing to do with Kantian philosophy, and Heidegger never notice to the reader where Kant stops and Heidegger start. Thus, in front of this thesis Kant already expressed in his time that "understanding and sensibility become brothers, in spite of their heterogeneity, to engender our knowledge, AS IF one faculty had its origin in the other, or AS IF both of 'em had a common origin, THOUGH IT CAN NOT BE, or at least it is not-understandable that the heterogeneous get engendered from a common root" (Kant, Anthropology, par. 31), and he also warned us from this misleading in his transcendental deduction (1787), concerning the same topic treated in relation to this in the aesthetics (inner sense), but now, obviously accurated, in KrV B 152 - B 159. But Heidegger intentionally doesn't consider the second edition deduction.

Why then, an acknowledged philosopher ignores this basic start point? It is there a hidden purpose? Probably in its more surfaced task, yes. But the historical context may clarify us the fact that such a kind of interpretations are engaged to struggle against modernity and its methods, trying to replace `em both by a new dark age through an ad auctoritas interpretandi method. Against this, Kant also said "in philosophy, there is no classic author" (Answer to Eberhard, 1st, secc. Part 3) The book, in relation to Heidegger's rhetoric, can be useful and "clarifying", but in relation to Kant and modern philosophy, it can be reduced to "nothing". The not-understandable that Kant names in the passage above means a type of nothingness (nihil negativum, KrV B 348, like saying "squared circle"), and it was remembered to us how is present in this kind of interpretations by T. W. Adorno, in his Negative Dialectics: "the doctrine of the being hide and exploit dialectics that makes mix up pure particularization and pure universality, both equally undetermined; emptiness becomes a mythic cuirass".

Don't buy this piece of trash, unless you want to impress a fooled girl in the faculty with this "technical nothingness".

Nicolás Guzmán Grez.

systematic and technical Heidegger.......2005-09-01

It is primarily and for the most part a readable translation of some very difficult to translate, much less understand and appropriate, esoteric thought. An absolute must read for any would-be Heideggerians, and not a bad place to get some insight into Kant at the same time.

Easily among Heidegger's best works.......2003-09-27

A masterpiece in its own right.

The origin of Deconstruction. Read before `Being and Time'........2000-02-22

Intended to be part of `Being and Time', but published separately and after BT. Heidegger's intention for `Kant and The Problem of Metaphysics' is straight forward; that is, Rational-Cognitive subjectivity (as presented in Kant's `Critique of Pure Reason') is not a tenable basis for metaphysics. Why? Because `time' alone can provide a foundation for metaphysics; thereby, dispensing with Reason, subjectivity and the rest of Kant's transcendental machinery. Heidegger claims to have `found Kant out'; that is, earlier editions of Kant's Critique has time as a much more important notion. Heidegger accuses Kant of recoiling from the primacy of time, and goes on to demonstrate that time is the basis of any possible metaphysics; to be carried out as a fundamental ontology via `Being and Time'.

Watch out for Heidegger's own recoil regarding spatiality and its relation to time.

Being and Time, Part II.......2000-02-05

This is perhaps the second most important text from Heidegger behind the monumental Being and Time. Where Being and Time ends abruptly without venturing into the destruction of the history of western ontology, the "Kant book" appears to be a sketch of the possible direction of Heidegger's fundamental ontology.

Surprisingly enough, Heidegger offers a rather faithful exegesis of Kant's discussion of the schematism from the Critique of Pure Reason. This is a close and careful reading of Kant which demonstrates Heidegger's skill at reconstruction of an existing text. The short Part One of this book is a work of art as Heidegger clearly defines Kant's project as a groundwork for metaphysics, that is, as ontology, by tracing the initial remarks by Kant to their Greek and scholastic origins. Therefore, Heidegger argues that the Kant of the First Critique does not bring forth a theory of knowledge (and against the Prolegomena that Kant is making a foundation for science), but rather, that the real project is a critique of metaphysics by returning to ontology as the groundwork for metaphysics. Thus, this project runs straight into Heidegger's own concerns of the possibility of anthropology.

Included in this edition is a transcript of the historical (and highly entertaining) debate between Heidegger and Ernst Cassier from the Davos lectures. Along with this, the editors have included other illuminating notes, drafts, and forwards.

Whether for or against Heidegger, this book clearly demonstrates the enormous philosophical skills of Martin Heidegger.

Critique of Pure Reason
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Standard translation of landmark text

A foundation stone for modern philosophy

Critique of Pure Reason
Immanuel Kant
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
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ASIN: 1403911959

Book Description

Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is one of the most rewarding and difficult of all philosophical works. Norman Kemp Smith's translation is immensely valuable, not simply because he rendered Kant's language into readable English, but also because his own extensive understanding of the Critique made him acutely aware of the pitfalls of translation. This text is that of the second edition of 1787, with an additional translation of all first edition passages which in the second edition were either altered or omitted. For this reissue of Norman Kemp Smith's classic 1929 edition, Howard Caygill has contributed a new Preface, setting this translation into the context both of Kemp Smith's own life and work, and of his influence on Kant scholarship.

Customer Reviews:

Standard translation of landmark text.......2006-03-02

Norman Kemp Smith's translation seems to be one of the standard English translations of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Is it the best? I don't speak German, but it's certainly serviceable.

This is a daunting work. It's also a necessary work, inasmuch as any understand of contemporary thought and intellectual history must encounter it. Kant has influenced nearly every major school of thought and cultural trend for the last 200 years. Below, I'll try to sketch his thought in this Critique.

This is the story of Immanuel Kant, who found philosophy a mess and sought to fix it. Specifically, he was a former Rationalist who was disconcerted by the critique of British Empiricism (specifically the skeptical philosophy of David Hume). He sought to provide a grounding for the truths of empirical science and mathematics, establish the possibility of religious faith and practice, while at the same time avoid dogmatism in metaphysical reasoning.

How did he seek to do this? By establishing a critique of reason whereby he understands the validity of all mental constructs. Kant distinguish between judgments which are a priori (prior to experience) and a posteriori (arising out of experience), and judgments which are "analytic" (trivial, tautological) and "synthetic" (where the predicate adds something that is not contained within the subject). Are synthetic a priori judgments possible? Kant answers yes, and much of this book deals with what follows from that.

First Kant deals with how we have sense experience. He claims that space and time are necessary a priori conditions for sense experience -- not physical things in the world. The content of our experience is sense-data: raw sensation that arises outside ourselves or inside ourselves and is "given" in experience. The forms in which we construct that experience are space and time.
Sensations, organized within us spatially and temporally yields sense experience (perceptions).

Kant then proceeds to our abstract thought. What he terms "Understanding" has pure, a priori concepts according to logical form. He calls these "Categories." These do NOT arise as a mere empirical habit/convention -- they are prior to experience and are necessary forms that allow rational beings to experience the world intelligibly. Thus, we take the raw givens of our Understanding, which are perceptions (which we dealt with under "Transcendental Aesthetic"), and we impose the categories upon these perceptions -- we "schematize" our experience.
Perceptions, given intelligible form according to schemata, yield intelligible concepts. We are justified in doing this because the perceptions are not things-in-themselves, but mere appearances (phenomena), and in order for these phenomena to exist in an experience that is coherent and consistent for us, they must have these forms. We are NOT justified in applying these categories to things-in-themselves (noumena).

This is where Reason eats itself. It tries to do the same thing the understanding did, but now it does this with respect to the big metaphysical questions. It starts with concepts and attempts to unify all phenomenal experience according to concepts and yield the Ideas of Pure Reason. When it does this, it gets all confuzelled. It tries to deal with 3 Big Problems (Kant uses the term "dialectic"):

* Soul - Reason wants to insist that the thinking soul exists, that it is subject (pure substance), that it is simple, and that it is unchangeable through all its activities. These are the Paralogisms of Pure Reason. We need these ideas -- their contraries are unthinkable for us(?), but these are not demonstrable.
* The World - Reason wants to answer questions about the series of appearances that constitute the world: Is the World limited or unlimited in space and time? Is the world made up of simples or composites? Does freedom exist in the world? Is there a necessary being connected with the world? These are the Antinomies of Pure Reason. Unlike the Paralogisms, these questions admit of contradictory answers. They, too, cannot be adjudicated by pure reason.
* God - Reason wants to demonstrate the existence of God. Kant refers to this as the Ideal of Pure Reason. He claims that all arguments demonstating God's existence in fact, despite outward appearances, depend upon one method, the "ontological" proof of God's existence, which Kant disallows as transempirical.

Kant tries to tell us how to employ reason. First, stop arguing speculatively about God, etc.! But he urges us to apply those metaphysical ideas must be employed in practical (moral) contexts. In this, he anticipates the Victorians, who were somewhat skeptical on matters of faith, but stressed the necessity of continuing to act according to traditional morality. The dialectic problems deals with ideas are not verifiable speculatively. They are not constitutive of experience. Rather, they serve a regulative function, specifically in the practical realm of morality.

Kant claims that reason is architectonic: it naturally wants to assume the greatest generality. Kant says this is fine for moral thinking, but bad for speculative thinking.

Kant says that philosophy answers these questions: "What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope for?" The bulk of Critique of Pure Reason answers the first question. The Critique of Practical Reason, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Metaphysic of Morals, etc., answer the second question. The third question ties the two together -- this is what Kant deals with at the end of the first Critique.

Kant sees the great transendental ideas as being God, Immortality, and Freedom. They are the starting points of theistic religion (e.g. Christianity and Judaism). These can neither be verified nor disproved by speculative reason (since speculative reason must by its nature deal with givens (Latin, data) either from sense-experience or pure intuition (as in mathematics). These ideas, however, are necessary "regulative" ideas for the guidance of practical (moral reason) and are valid in that connection. Thus, the second Critique answers the question "What ought I to do?" by recourse to the transcendal idea of Freedom. The question, "what may I hope for?", is given response through the transcendental ideas of God and immortality, for if God does not exist, nothing can grant us happiness for moral behavior and unhappiness for immoral behavior, and if we're not immortal, God won't have anyone to reward.

I probably have made errors and inaccuracies in the above, but I hope I give a flavor for his thought. Kant is sober, earnest, and disciplined. Again, he's not easy, but I think he's worth the effort.

A foundation stone for modern philosophy.......2005-10-07

Kant: Political Writings (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought)

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Best collection I've seen in English

Kant: Political Writings (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought)
Immanuel Kant
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0521398371

Book Description

The original edition of Kant: Political Writings was first published in 1970, and has long been established as the principal English-language edition of this important body of writing. In this new, expanded edition two important texts illustrating Kant's view of history are included for the first time, his reviews of Herder's Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind and Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History, as well as the essay What is Orientation in Thinking?. In addition to a general introduction assessing Kant's political thought in terms of his fundamental principles of politics, this edition also contains such useful student aids as notes on the texts, a comprehensive bibliogaphy and a new postscript, looking at some of the principal issues in Kantian scholarship that have arisen since the first edition.

Customer Reviews:

Best collection I've seen in English.......1999-12-20

This is the best affordable paperback collection of Kant's essays on politics and the philosophy of history. You get Perpetual Peace, Idea for a Universal History, Contest of the Faculties, The End of all Things, Theory and Practice, What is Enlightenment and several other essays. Hans Reiss' introduction is well written and illuminating as well. There is another, cheaper collection published by Hackett Publishing Co. (Perpetual Peace and Other Essays). However, it is smaller and less comprehensive than this edition.

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