The Kantian Metaphors

Abstract

The ‘dry, grey packing-paper style’ of the first Critique has been an object of mockery since the time of Heinrich Heine (1997: 96). And it is quite true that the reader can easily be alienated by Kant’s frequently elaborate and rather involved sentence construction. But when Kant wishes to draw the reader’s attention to some particularly important point or conclusion, he will often resort to short emphatic sentences instead. In any case, it is clear that his style is by no means long-winded if we understand this to mean prolixity or even garrulousness. Schooled as he was in the classical Latin authors, Kant is also capable of writing an excellent Ciceronian German over long stretches of his work. He concedes that the Critique is composed in a ‘dry, purely scholastic fashion’, but he has good reasons for adopting this style: in his original draft he had included many ‘examples and illustrations’, but as the full magnitude of his task and the abundance of themes to be dealt with became more and more obvious as he proceeded, he found it ‘inadvisable to enlarge the text yet further through examples and illustrations’ (A xviii). And if he had indeed attempted a less concentrated exposition, the already voluminous work would be inflated beyond all reasonable measure.