starting kant

[Anonymous No.20035922]

where the fuck do i start with this guy? im shopping for books and i while critique of pure reason is obviously on the list, i cant work out which of his other works are essential reading for understanding later authors in continental philosophy, and whether i should or should not include a couple of Bennetts books on him. should i buy books individually, or should i try to find a collection of his writings?

tl;dr give me purchasing advice on kant

[Anonymous No.20035928]

>>20035922
The greeks

[Anonymous No.20035931]

>>20035928
read em

[Anonymous No.20035986]

Get the Prolegomena, get as much secondary literature as you will find interesting, once you're bored of that start Pure Reason.

[Anonymous No.20036011]

>>20035986
my budget is limited and im reading on the bus ride to work, so i am trying to be economical in my purchases, im looking for maximum returns when it comes to money and time spent

[Anonymous No.20036152]

I wonder.
I'm on the Transcendental Aesthetic (and so am well aware that Kant's reasoning here may become clearer later on) -- what confuses me is how it seems to follow, from the discovery that time and space, being pure forms of the sensible intuition, bear only on objects of the senses, that these objects of the senses have nothing to do with objects in themselves; that the thing in itself is wholly unknown, and that we cannot assume at all that its features resemble those which appear to us. What am I missing here? What is it about our perception that renders us completely unable to say anything with certainty about things in themselves; unable even to posit the unique qualities of a thing such that it appears to us as rooted in the thing in itself? I mean we know there are unique objects, e.g. a rose which is of a particular height and number of petals and which is thus distinct from other roses -- why is it impossible for us to say that these differences (between different roses) have their basis in the things in themselves? Or does Kant indeed allow that we can assume this is so, but forbids us from any pretension to knowing through experience what a rose in itself actually is? But, in that case, what is it in particular about the Transcendental Aesthetic that leads to this conclusion? The mere fact that we have a priori intuitions, which structure our experience, and which we cannot do without?

[Anonymous No.20036170]

>>20035922
Skip Kant, read Schoppytoppy, fuck bitches

[Anonymous No.20036253]

>>20036170
whats shopenhaurs essential works for continental philosophy?

[Anonymous No.20036289]

>>20036253
The fuck this nigga saying yo

[Anonymous No.20036351]

>>20035986
Prolegomena is harder to read than the first critique - he should prolly start with the first critique.

[Anonymous No.20036440]

>>20036011
Just get secondary then, I'd recommend Yovel's Kants Philospohical Revolution to start.

[Anonymous No.20036453]

>>20036351
Not wrong, but you can finish Prolegomena much quicker and begin unpacking it in your mind sooner. My experience reading the Critique of Pure Reason is that a lot of it e together towards the end once I could reference ideas to previous sections. With Prolegomena, you start the process of having Kants positions in your head to test without going through 400 pages.

[Anonymous No.20036526]

If you're interested in psychology, like why we think the things we do, why we make the decisions we do etc. is there anything directly about that in Kant?
As I understand it he gives the most fundamental description of the underlying principles through which the mind interprets and represents the world, and on a extremely atomic level that might be useful to asking questions about how we perceive anything from purchasing decision, gestures of friendship, and why we obsess or ponder certain thoughts. Or would I be better off reading actual psychology?

[Anonymous No.20036564]

>>20036526
While ideas will likely be interesting psychology is still an empirical science that only takes into account judgements arrived from experience, what Kant would call a posteriori knowledge. When Kant is critiquing "pure reason", he means he's critiquing the potential and content of a study of the principles that make experience possible ie a priori or true outside of our own experience. So if you accept Kants epistemology, there is a fundamental break between his a priori science and the science of psychology through experiments and experience.

[Anonymous No.20036575]

>>20035922
If you get Critique of Pure Reason get Groundwork On The Metaphysics Of Morals

[Anonymous No.20036710]

>>20036564
Does Kant's description of cognition stop at his epistemology or does he meditate on anything that might come underneath the heading of the more empirical 'psychology'?

[Anonymous No.20036735]

>>20036526
You can try reading his Critique of Judgement/Aesthetics, but I don't believe there is any psychology in that sense, in fairness though I've only read the first two Critiques and the Prolegomena. Kant refers to this as "empirische Psychologie", opposed to "transzendentale Psychologie", the latter being speculation about the nature of the soul and the former "practical psychology" as most people understand the word today.

[Anonymous No.20036771]

>>20036735
That might be what I'm looking for, thanks. However where does the whole idea of the Hypothetical Imperative come into discussions of motivation? Or have I totally misinterpreted the concept. I was under the impression that anything that is done for the sake of some end is a 'hypothetical imperative' (as opposed to the categorical imperative - where the act is it's own end)

[Anonymous No.20036888]

>>20036253
Read Critique of the Kantian Philosophy. Then read Kant. That way when you get to some of Kant's biggest retard moments, like his argument for the apriority of causality (Schoppy also argues for this but in a marginally less retarded way) you won't spend a significant amount of time thinking that you're the retard for not being able to buy into it.

[Anonymous No.20036912]

>>20036152
Kant essentially has four arguments for space and time being pure forms of the intuition.

>1. Space & time are not empirical concepts. Unless one already possessed some notion of space and time, one could never experience objects are spatially or temporally ordered.
>2. The vorstellung (representation/presentation) of space and time are necessary grounds for the representation of spatial or temporal objects. i.e. we can imagine space with nothing in it, but not an object not in space.
>3. Space and time are pure intuition rather than concepts of the understanding. They are both unities and not multiplicities. Concepts are collections of individual things brought together by the differentiating property of the concept, while with space and time, individual points are limitations of the whole. Individual spaces and time are defined by their relation to space and time, rather than the other way around with concepts.
>4. Representations of space and time are infinite given magnitudes, each is represented as containing an infinite amount of parts within it, all of which come along with the representation of the whole to a person. Concepts cannot do this, as a concept cannot contain within it an infinite amount of differentiating properties. Thus space and time cannot be concepts, and must be pure intuition.

Kant says that we have absolutely no knowledge of the thing in itself, and cannot breach beyond human sensation with regard to empirical objects and their representation. The idea of the thing in itself will become clearer if you read critiques of it by any of his successors such as Schulze, Fitche, Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer. For instance, Schopenhauer believed that the thing in itself one/will.

[Anonymous No.20036929]

>>20036710
I'd say I'm terma of his popular work, it quickly moves to his moral philosophy which spoiler alert, he views as the main legitimate use of pure reason. He did a large of amount of his lecturing of more casual topics such as anthropology, so it would be good to check if his less popular works interest you. Also Kants got some works on political philosophy if you're interested in that kind of group psychology

[Anonymous No.20036947]

>>20036526
Yes, but not in any of his major works, and not exactly in the way you are describing.
For instance, his critique of pure reason will likely not have a single section in it that will be read and easily applied by the vast majority of readers.
He however had an interest in anthropology, in which you will find the closest to what you are looking for, apart from his moral works.

[Anonymous No.20037052]

>>20036929
>>20036947
Yeah those less popular and anthropological works probably will suite me.

[Anonymous No.20037075]

>>20036912
But how does it follow from any of these expositions that the thing in itself is wholly unknown? It is very apparent that he thinks we cannot get at things in themselves, but it is not clear why -- not clear at least in regard of the theory of the transcendental ideality of space and time. For space and time are merely relations: what prevents us from assuming however that that which is being related in them (the matter of appearence) corresponds in some manner to the thing in itself? Why can't we say that a difference between the different appearences of two different roses corresponds to a difference in the things in themselves (in which, I take it, these appearences are rooted)? (Or, if the thing-in-itself is defined as that which is left over when you take away everything that appears to us, then how can Kant even posit its existence at this point?)

[Anonymous No.20037102]

>>20037075
He says that all we can know is that there is a thing in itself which objects of sensation that are presented to us are related to in some way. He infers that there is a relation between the two, but if I am remembering correctly, does not say much more than this.
For Kant, we are dealing with two different worlds: the world of appearances (sense-world) and the world beyond appearances (thing in itself). He doesn't say that these two worlds cannot correspond, and because we know nothing of things in themselves beyond their mere existence, it is even possible for him that appearances are not unlike the the object in itself.
Keep in mind while reading Kant however that for many major thinkers, the thing in itself was discredited soon after it was formulated. So there are certainly issues with the idea of a thing in itself, so do not take Kant's word for it.

[Anonymous No.20037113]

>>20036771
Neither the categorical imperative nor a hypothetical imperative would be "acts done for their own sake" properly speaking. That would be more an example of virtue ethics (see Aristotle) and non-Kantian. The categorical imperative is respected out of duty to universal reason, so it's only so far as an action is categorically possible (under all possible circumstances) that it is considered moral. A hypothetical imperative would be a more restricted viewpoint, for example, "if x gives y and y is imperative, then x is an imperative." (Keeping in mind that "imperative" here is not equivalent to "good", it is just Kant's idea of moral responsibility, but it almost acts as a placeholder). This is really just consequential, or more practical and grounded formulation which is capable of accounting for contingencies (like the famous "problem of lying" which people always repeat with respect to the categorical imperative).

[Anonymous No.20037141]

>>20037113
>The categorical imperative is respected out of duty to universal reason, so it's only so far as an action is categorically possible (under all possible circumstances) that it is considered moral.
Ahh okay thank you for clearing that up.
So the hypothetical imperative is some imperative that remotely or indirectly serves a categorical imperative? I'm just looking at my notes here and I have written:
>Hypothetical Imperative - a conditional imperative in service of some will, to perform some act in a given circumstance to bring about a desired outcome.
It seems I should have replaced 'desired outcome' which is way off, with 'a categorical imperative'?

[Anonymous No.20037318]

>>20037141
>So the hypothetical imperative is some imperative that remotely or indirectly serves a categorical imperative?
Yes, hypothetical has the same basis as hypothesis, ie scientific knowledge acquisition. Scientific knowledge aims at categorical knowledge, but cannot get there in principle, it is restrained to hypothetical knowledge, the same applies to hypothetical and categorical imperatives. To think that you could ever have a real categorical imperative (ie, outside of an abstraction or thought experiment) is almost superstitious thinking, because it's basically impossible for us not to add "if" to any statement we make about the world.
>It seems I should have replaced 'desired outcome' which is way off, with 'a categorical imperative'?
It's not even an imperative if you are doing it to bring about a desired outcome. Hypothetical judgements are making judgements which could be wrong, so one is still aiming towards what is imperative/necessary but not necessarily desired, but not under the assumption that one must be correct about which action is imperative/necessary.