Introducing Kant

Book excerpt: Immanuel Kant laid the foundations of modern Western thought. Every subsequent major philosopher owes a profound debt to Kant's attempts to delimit human reason as an appropriate object of philosophical enquiry. And yet, Kant's relentless systematic formalism made him a controversial figure in the history of the philosophy that he helped to shape. Introducing Kant focuses on the three critiques of Pure Reason, Practical Reason and Judgement. It describes Kant's main formal concepts: the relation of mind to sensory experience, the question of freedom and the law and, above all, the revaluation of metaphysics. Kant emerges as a diehard rationalist yet also a Romantic, deeply committed to the power of the sublime to transform experience. The illustrated guide explores the paradoxical nature of the pre-eminent philosopher of the Enlightenment, his ideas and explains the reasons for his undiminished importance in contemporary philosophical debates.