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Introduction: Kant the Revolutionary

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The Palgrave Kant Handbook

Part of the book series: Palgrave Handbooks in German Idealism ((PHGI))

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Abstract

The era of German Idealism stands alongside ancient Greece and the French Enlightenment as one of the most fruitful and influential periods in the history of philosophy. Beginning with the publication of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason in 1781 and ending about ten years after Hegel’s death in 1831, the period of “classical German philosophy” transformed whole fields of philosophical endeavor.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Heinrich von Kleist to Ulrike von Kleist, 23 March 1801, in An Abyss Deep Enough: Letters of Heinrich von Kleist, trans. and ed. Philip B. Miller (New York: Dutton, 1982), 97–98.

  2. 2.

    In the B-edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant adds a short section that reinterprets the ancient theory of the transcendentals, which he identifies as the claim that “quodlibet ens est unum, verum, bonum [every being is one, true, and good]” (B113). Kant says that, while the ancients identified these as “predicates of things [Dinge],” they are really “logical requisites and criteria of all cognition of things in general [Erkenntniß der Dinge überhaupt]” (B113–14). In this introduction, I am not addressing the different interpretations of the transcendentals or Kant’s use of the term in the first Critique. Rather, I am using the transcendentals as a device to focus on three revolutionary ideas in Kant.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Central Washington University, Ellensburg, USA

    Matthew C. Altman

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  1. Matthew C. Altman
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Correspondence to Matthew C. Altman .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Central Washington University, Ellensburg, Washington, USA

    Matthew C. Altman

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© 2017 The Author(s)

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Altman, M.C. (2017). Introduction: Kant the Revolutionary. In: Altman, M. (eds) The Palgrave Kant Handbook. Palgrave Handbooks in German Idealism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54656-2_1

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