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50 Greatest Books

The Critique of Pure Reason

SUSAN NEIMAN

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Latest comment posted at 12:30 PM EDT 23/05/08

Is it 'the single greatest work of modern philosophy'? ...Read the full article

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  1. dee haney from United States writes: I'd suggest starting with Schopenhauer's review of Kant. He's a clear writer and well explains Kant's impact.
  2. Action Jackson from Canada writes: Kant is the greatest western philosopher. It's hard to make sense western intellectual developments of the past 200 years without a grounding in Kant. A good and affordable translation of his Critique of Pure Reason is the 1996 translation by Werner Pluhar (published by Hackett).
  3. Mr. Justice from Canada writes: dee: You're absolutely right about Schopenhauer and clarity. He is a breath of fresh air re: Kant and so much else.
  4. Tobin Manley from The Bronx, NYC, United States writes: Call me shallow, but I prefer the wonderfully written Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes.
  5. The Globing Male from Beantown, United States writes: Eeeee-manual Kant was a real pissant, who was very rarely stable....
  6. dwight steadman from Fort Macleod from Canada writes: René Descartes was a drunken old fart: 'I drink therefore I am'
  7. jason werbics from saskatoon, Canada writes: No.

    The Peasant Philosopher
  8. black and white from canmore, Canada writes: I don't want to rain on this intellectual parade but honestly,how many people ,besides Philosophy majors,in this digitized age are going to read Kant to gain 'Enlightenment'?....this quest/struggle for 'meaning' is a very western thinking ,specialized niche bordering on pomposity...
  9. Trying to be Rational from St. John's, Canada writes: Hey Black and White: nothing pompous, though, about your dismissing 2500 years of western thinking in your little footnote to it, is there?
    And your argument: 'If it ain't 'popular' among the digitized then it ain't real'.
    If that isn't the height of profundity, I'm Aristotle.
  10. John Smith from Canada writes: Back to your on-line porn and self gratification Black and White. You are quite right there is nothing for you here.
  11. black and white from canmore, Canada writes: For the writer to call this book 'The single greatest work of modern philosophy' just illustrates how arrogant the western intellectual community is....doesn't modern philosophy include D T Suzuki, Vedanta, Lao-tzu or any of the Hindu,Zen or Islamic philosophers? Kant is not the 'greatest philosopher',not even a household name, in Asia or India...only in the niche of our jaded western outlook...
  12. Mike Baker from Iqaluit, Canada writes: '[T]he principle of Enlightenment is to think for yourself ...'

    The tribalists who have reduced this country's political discourse to moribund paralysis are certainly frightened by the thought.
  13. Albin Forone from Canada writes: I'm feeling a bit nostalgic for grad school this weekend, so am happy to recall my youthful interest in Kant's efforts to reconcile personal subjective experience with dependable abstraction. There used to be an academic debate over who was the last thinker who could reasonably think he (not she) had a complete and comprehensive grasp of philosophy, art, religion and science before they all split off into irreconcilable academic specialties: Kant is my candidate for 'last best academic mind' despite a certain physical and sensual dessication. Of course, things have moved along since then.
  14. Jeff Pritchard from Canada writes: black and white from canmore, Canada writes: ....doesn't modern philosophy include D T Suzuki, Vedanta, Lao-tzu or any of the Hindu,Zen or Islamic philosophers?

    >>>

    As Lao-tzu is thought to have lived about 600 years B.C., this points to your having a rather peculiar interpretation of the term 'modern'.
  15. TIMOTHY JORDAN from GRANDE PRAIRIE, Canada writes: Four years after immigrating to a red-necked part of Canada, had given me a blinkered view of Canadians. I had felt let down, by the parochial life of residents in Alberta. Thank you all, for reviving my faith in the lost art of debate. Although ignorant of the writings of Kant, I have at last, come upon a web-site, that may further any intellectual abilities, that have been stunted, these last few years.
    Aleuta continua.
    Please will 'the zebra' explain why he thinks that Kant is not the greatest philosopher of the modern era?
    Thank you.
  16. lotusland maritimer from Sault Ste Marie, Canada writes: Indeed. Modern means in this context roughly everybody except the Greeks and Romans. Some would of course have a separate category here Kantians can have an orgasm for mediaeval the three ages of western culture being classic mediaeval and modern though one would have a fight about Boethius and the late scholastics as they straddle two ages. Then there's a footnote or a digressive excursion called Eastern everwhere and everywhen else than the above. There's this rabid fad of attacking western culure as if there were anything else. There is indeed nothing else but Greek, everything else is a mere afterthought. All of human culture anything that's worthwhile was begun and perfected by the Greeks, indeed philosophy even the name tells us that, science art music literary genres almost any area of human endeavor or knowledge is Greek. The most important contribution other than science for after all other civilizations had art and music and even math but none had politics. If you read a Chinese classic on warfare or statecraft you are in a perverse degenerate subhuman world where only might exists. There is never a thought of political categories on the Athenian model. All even tribal lands had their old male gettogethers, but to have law above men is exclusively GrecoRoman idea. Sed dura lex. Peace of course is impossible as the rest of the world is incapable of grasping the most elemental concepts of political science, authority and power resides in structures not usurpers. Putin Ayatollahs Deng do not derive their legitimacy from democratic concepts Mao political power out of gunbarrel. Now we of course are just grasping at the ideal for it is very far from reality. But at least the scaffoldings of a human polity are extant. Kant was dead wrong on art, he indeed is shallow subjectivist and modern like Gombrich who doesnt know what art is. A Greek of course knows exactly what art is and more important what isnt. Say rock music or photography. Censored.
  17. Jason F from Canada writes: Am I the only one who is mildly upset that this article had little if anything to do with the Critique of Pure Reason itself? I would have appreciated at least a mild discussion on the Third Antinomy and its centrality to the work. Moreover, the author seems to champion Kant as an enlightened thinker yet ignores his not-so-enlightened views of Africans. She can take whatever stance she likes, but issues such as this ought to be addressed.

    In my opinion, the Critique of Pure Reason created the third epoch in Western philosophy. Although many Islamic and Eastern thinkers do not receive the recognition they deserve, that does not diminish the historical or philosophical importance of Kant. Anyone who argues otherwise is merely disgruntled.

    RE: Lotusland Maritimer, please withhold your non-nonsensical rants. Kant a 'shallow subjectivist' who was dead wrong on art... talk about audacity! What greater good have you done for philosophy, or humankind more generally? You're no Nietzsche, so don't think you can be justified in calling Kant an idiot. And for the record, I don't think Nietzsche was justified either.
  18. Wayne VanTassel from Victoria, Canada writes: Kant was a horrible writer, but the Critique of the Pure Reason starts with one of the best sentences in all of philosophy: "Human reason has this peculiar fate: it is burdened by questions which, prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it cannot ignore, but which, transcending all its powers, it cannot answer." That one sentence not only sums up the whole ponderous Kant Critique, but also one of the essential tragedies of the human condition.
  19. Mike Baker from Iqaluit, Canada writes: Hi Wayne ... Would you mind giving us - in brief summation if possible - your explanation for why you consider the quoted passage an indicator of "one of the essential tragedies of the human condition"?

    I've considered the conundrum to be the great motivator. It's force is hardly diminished by age. Questions not for the sake of the answers themselves, but perhaps for the pleasure of the pursuit of answers. And any possible answers at which I've arrived I've thought to be considered tenuous place-holders with room for improvement.
  20. steve allan from Welland, Ontario, Canada writes: -----Still, the book is the single greatest work of modern philosophy, and has but one rival — Plato's Republic — in the history of thought.-----

    Who says, Susan Neiman? Her statement is so arrogant and obnoxious that the rest of the article isn't worth reading.
  21. TIMOTHY JORDAN from GRANDE PRAIRIE, Canada writes: To describe Kant's views on Africans as not so enlightened, is to deny the reality of a backward continent at the time. To introduce political correctness about one's views, is to deny that each and everyone of us has racist tendencies. I have no doubt, that Kant's views today are as applicable about a continent, that can do nothing else except maim, slaughter, and produce corruption on a scale that has maintained its inhabitants in penury. I refer to Sub-Saharan Africa. The Arabic north would prefer to differentiate themselves, from the not so enlightened masses to the south
  22. black and white from canmore, Canada writes: Using the term "the greatest" is suppose to attract people to a particular thing but often the opposite occurs as the term "greatest" means that that there is only one and it is linear....it also implies exclusivity ,which in this case, discourages readers from participation.Bush is fond of calling The USA "the greatest country in the world' to the detriment of the PR he's trying to achieve.(But to even include him in this discussion is an oxymoron)....Siddhārtha Gautama definitely has had a tremendous influence on our modern existence but to call him "the greatest" would be paradoxical with buddhism.Even the term "human reason" is foreign to buddhists....now I am going outside to enjoy some sun which has not been the greatest in Alberta this spring...
  23. D Chiu from Victoria, Canada writes: Why do people get sucked into debatiing " the greatest" ? Just a waste of time. Learn what is good from whoever has something to offer.
  24. Dave T from midwest, Canada writes: For me lightning lasts wrote Rene Char, Frances best poet of the 20th century, and apropos of Kants revolution, who after all stood the Rationalists on their heads within his synthetic apriori concept of knowledge, and who set the bar high enough that philosophic inquiry for well over a century could not exclude his contribution, the cagey William James being an exception, but his counterpart Charles Sanders Pierce, apotheosis of pragmatism, acknowledging a pervasive Kantian influence, even though their constructs are almost opposite. Without The Critique of Pure Reason, Schopenhauers work would not have evolved as it did, nor would Fictes or Hegels. And Kants influence has been noted in the works of Wittgenstein, Husserl, and even Heidegger, who admittedly did write, technique is the metaphysics of the age. And herein lays one decisive qualification of our list: to have constructed a work of such magnitude that what follows as greatness could not have been possible without it, or at least possible in the form it took. I would offer this in support of the choice of Critique, mindful, however, that some of the selections to date can make no such claim in the supranational history of the art. And neither of the two most influential and penetrating novelists of the 19th century have appeared to date on our list; one presumes they are on their way, but at the same time, you wonder. The longest lasting lightning is out there; the chain, evident. As Char wrote, Whoever believed the enigma renewable became the enigma.
  25. Murray Braithwaite from Canada writes: For me, Nietzsche's opus has it over Kant. Kant never understood nonlinear dynamics or incompleteness teorems. Nietzsche studied Cantor's diagonalization proof intently (checking the book from the Basel University library over 30 times) and it underlies his epistemology. By analogy, Newtonian phsics is to Kant as Relativity and quantum physics is to Nietzsche.
  26. Darrin Duell from Canada writes: hmm.. I'm a "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" man myself..
  27. Unknown Philosopher from Canada writes: Did it ever occur to everyone that even though Prussia/Germany produced so much wealth in virtuous philosphical thought : Nietsche, Schopenhouer, Goethe, Heidegger, Kant, Hegel and on and on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ListofGerman-language_philosophers), with categorical imperatives, etc that it didn't lead to anything good, as one should expect. Their thinking no doubt led to a secular Germany, but it didn't stop the creation, as one would have expected, of the most evil ideology that the world has ever known, regardless of all their naccessible ponderings.

    PS Lotus maritimer, you forgot to mention the invention of the phonetic alphabet, perhaps the greatest technological breakthrough ever.
  28. lotusland maritimer from Canada writes: I have the highest regard for Kant as a philosopher though I prefer not just all the Greeks and Romans and French and with a shudder the Anglos and the Dutch and the odd Italian and Spaniard, yet I disagree with his aesthetics as being totally incompetent inadequate and wide of the mark. We are deprived and in the dark precisely because we have Aristotle on tragedy hubris and all that but we have lost his tome on comedy. So we cant even think rationally about laughter comedy or mirth because the Greeks didnt do our thinking for us.Which is the underlying leitmotiv of one of Umberto Ecos potboilers. Time to get the marine archaeologists off their butts and find some amphorae in a Mediterranean shipwreck with the missing scrolls of Aristotle. Not the most important issue by any means what is science what is knowledge how do we know what we know ie epistemiology what is existence is there a God ie theology and other such issues of philosophy and most importantly what is a just society ie political science are far more important issues than what is beautiful and why. I do not think it diminishes the stature of Kant at all as a philosopher to say that he was execrable as an aesthetician for who cares but poets painters sculptors and musicians? To be the last and greatest ontologist and methaphysicians is surely enough, as later philosophers demolished these subspecialities into deconstructed nihil. Kant is firmly in the modern realatisistic muck, he doesnt think there is ineffable sublime and objective beauty. He is wrong as I said as would Horace Homer Hesiod Longinus Cicero and Plato and Aristotle all agree that there is real objective definable beauty. It exists in Dante Vasari and Wllflin but not in Kant or Gombrich who doesnt know what art is. Too bad for them. A pity. You do not necessarily have to agree with any judgement of value or aesthetic quality but that there is such a thing. A buried or a wrapped concept ain't art I'm afraid.
  29. scott mclendon from Memphis,TN, United States writes: ....Socrates himself was permanently pissed......
  30. bruce reid from Chippawa, Canada writes: Well I think that if Paris Hilton wants to get married to Benji, that's her business and that everybody should just....

    Oops, sorry - wrong room. Guess I'm just a "Synthetic a posteriori" kinda guy.

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