Henry Allison and the B-Deduction

 

HENRY. E. ALLISON | Kant’s Transcendental Deduction. An Analytical-Historical Commentary | Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015

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By Michael Friedman

Henry Allison’s new book on Kant’s Transcendental Deduction (2015) is a masterpiece, the best of all the excellent books that he has produced.^[1] It is, as its subtitle asserts, a true “analytical-historical commentary”, beginning with Kant’s work in the 1760s, continuing with the period of the Inaugural Dissertation, proceeding with the ‘silent decade’ of the 1770s, following with the A-Deduction and the relevant intervening writings between the two editions of the Critique, and concluding with two detailed and substantial chapters on the B-Deduction corresponding to its now generally accepted division into two parts, §§15–20 and §§21–7 respectively. There is nothing like it in the literature, and it is as illuminating as it is comprehensive.

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On Categorial Illusion in Kant

 

By Dennis Schulting

In this notice, I want to address a remark that Anil Gomes (2018) makes, in an excellent critique of my earlier book Kant’s Radical Subjectivism (Schulting 2017), with respect to the modal nature of the claim about the application of categories to objects, namely the belief—in my account—that ‘the destination claim [is] one about the objects of experience necessarily exemplifying the categories’. Gomes writes that this

seems too strong since, on the face of it, it looks like there can be categorial illusions: cases where the objects of judgement, experience, or perception seem to exemplify some category or other but actually fail to do so. (2018:101)

New Work on Kant (IV): Kant on Persons and Agency

 

ERIC WATKINS (ed.) | Kant on Persons and Agency | Cambridge University Press 2018

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By Christian Onof 

This volume of papers features an excellent line-up of many among the most influential contemporary Kant scholars so that the reader is entitled to expect much food for thought. And this expectation is fully met with a selection of thought-provoking papers around the topics of the person and agency, therefore dealing both with Kant’s theoretical and practical philosophy. The types of paper range from careful analyses of Kantian texts (from the Critical period) to developments of ideas that have a Kantian origin, but sometimes move well beyond that. This mixture is welcome: Kant’s philosophy is kept alive through new interpretations of the letter of his philosophy and through drawing upon insights taken from his writings and developing them in directions that may be said to be in the spirit of Kant’s writings but clearly go beyond its letter. Of course, this raises the question of how far beyond the letter one can go while remaining within the spirit of the Critical Kant, as we shall see.

Reply to Jessica Leech and Andrew Stephenson

 

NICHOLAS STANG | Kant’s Modal Metaphysics | Oxford University Press 2016

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By Nicholas Stang 

Let me begin by thanking Andrew Stephenson and Jessica Leech for such detailed, insightful, and thought-provoking comments. Writing a book is a lonely business, and one is never sure that the product of one’s labours will find a receptive audience, much less a sympathetic one. In Andrew and Jessica, Kant’s Modal Metaphysics (henceforth KMM) has found both and I thank them warmly for it.