Overview

A foremost Kant expert takes us on a lively tour through the revolutionary ideas of the founder of modern philosophy. Immanuel Kant is undoubtedly the most important philosopher of the modern era. His Critique of Pure Reason, ""categorical imperative,"" and conception of perpetual peace in the global order decisively influenced both intellectual history and twentieth-century politics, shaping everything from the German Constitution to the United Nations Charter. Renowned philosopher Marcus Willaschek explains why, three centuries after Kant's birth, his reflections on democracy, beauty, nature, morality, and the limits of human knowledge remain so profoundly relevant. Weaving biographical and historical context together with exposition of key ideas, Willaschek emphasizes three central features of Kant's theory and method. First, Kant combines seemingly incompatible positions to show how their insights can be reconciled. Second, he demonstrates that it is not only human thinking that must adjust to the realities of the world; the world must also be fitted to the structures of our thinking. Finally, he overcomes the traditional opposition between thought and action by putting theory at the service of practice. In Kant: A Revolution in Thinking, even readers having no prior acquaintance with Kant's ideas or with philosophy generally will find an adroit introduction to the Prussian polymath's oeuvre, beginning with his political arguments, expanding to his moral theory, and finally moving to his more abstract considerations of natural science, epistemology, and metaphysics. Along the way, Kant himself emerges from beneath his famed works, revealing a magnetic personality, a clever ironist, and a man deeply engaged with his contemporary world.

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Reviews

Marcus Willaschek’s Kant: A Revolution in Thinking lays out, in crystalline prose with limpid precision, the full range of concerns and contributions made by the most important thinker of the modern world. I can think of few writers whose understanding of Kant and ability to explain him to the general public are so well matched. This is a truly valuable book. -- William Egginton, author of <i>The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality</i> Kant's political and moral philosophy continues to be of profound interest to contemporary readers both in its own right and as the basis of modern moral and political thought as found in the writing of John Rawls, Christine Korsgaard, Tim Scanlon, and many others. Contrary to usual practice, Willaschek begins there and only then turns to Kant's equally profound but more abstract revolution in metaphysics. I do not know of a better introduction to Kant for general readers in any language than this engaging new book. -- Paul Guyer, author of <i>Kant's Impact on Moral Philosophy</i> and coeditor and translator of <i>The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant</i> In this remarkable book, one of the most cogent philosophers of our time, Marcus Willaschek, provides an inspiring and illuminating guide to the thought of one of the most important philosophers of all time, Immanuel Kant. -- Robert Brandom, author of <i>A Spirit of Trust: A Reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology</i>

Author Information

Marcus Willaschek is Professor of Philosophy at Goethe University, Frankfurt, and a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science, where he is responsible for the German standard edition of Kant’s works. The author of four books, he is also coeditor of the three-volume Kant-Lexikon.

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