Kant (PHIL 423)

Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is one of the few credible candidates for the title of ‘greatest book of philosophy ever written’. It is also a famously difficult book. Substantially the whole Critique will be read and discussed during the term. Topics include Kant’s cognitive psychology, the arguments of the Transcendental Aesthetic and the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories, issues of idealism and realism and the place of things in themselves in Kant’s philosophy, and what Kant thinks we can and can’t know about our own minds.

Note for undergrads: Restricted to juniors and seniors who have obtained instructor permission. Students must meet all or most of the following qualifications: majoring in philosophy, with a grade point average of at least 3.5 in at least three previous philosophy courses; at least one previous course in the history of philosophy, and at least one in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, or philosophy of mind.

Robert Adams’s webpage