Four Reasons for Engaging with Kant’s First Critique

Abstract

There are three principal reasons for a substantive contemporary engagement with Kant and the following study attempts to articulate the inner unity between them. The first Critique represents a fundamental alternative to the prevailing currents of contemporary philosophy (Chapter 1.2), and one which directly addresses two characteristic features of our own time: the process of epistemic as well as political globalisation (Chapter 1.3) and the contemporary dominance of the (natural) sciences (Chapter 1.4). But we begin with a brief consideration of the historical significance of Kant’s thought as a whole (Chapter 1.1). The present work is not intended as a contribution to Kant hagiography, but it certainly aims to contest that hagiographical tendency of the present which regards the philosophical approach generally adopted during the last couple of generations, and especially that belonging to one specific tradition, as the best foundation for engaging in systematic philosophy. For in confronting the first Critique, we are undeniably encountering a work of ‘world literature’: a text that does not belong to the past, but one which still possesses fundamental relevance for the present.