Kant on the Sources of Metaphysics: The Dialectic of Pure Reason - Hardcover

Willaschek, Marcus

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 110847263X ISBN 13: 9781108472630

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2019

Synopsis

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant famously criticizes traditional metaphysics and its proofs of immortality, free will and God's existence. What is often overlooked is that Kant also explains why rational beings must ask metaphysical questions about 'unconditioned' objects such as souls, uncaused causes or God, and why answers to these questions will appear rationally compelling to them. In this book, Marcus Willaschek reconstructs and defends Kant's account of the rational sources of metaphysics. After carefully explaining Kant's conceptions of reason and metaphysics, he offers detailed interpretations of the relevant passages from the Critique of Pure Reason (in particular, the 'Transcendental Dialectic') in which Kant explains why reason seeks 'the unconditioned'. Willaschek offers a novel interpretation of the Transcendental Dialectic, pointing up its 'positive' side, while at the same time it uncovers a highly original account of metaphysical thinking that will be relevant to contemporary philosophical debates.

About this title

About the Author

Marcus Willaschek is Professor of Modern Philosophy at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt. He is the author of Praktische Vernunft: Handlungstheorie und Moralbegründung bei Kant (1992) and Der Mentale Zugang Zur Welt: Realismus, Skeptizismus und Intentionalität (2003), and an editor of the three-volume Kant-Lexikon (2017).

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 110847263X
• ISBN 13: 9781108472630
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 308