The Philosophy of the Young Kant

Abstract

Abstract The Philosophy of the Young Kant: The Precritical Project is a study of Kant’s early writings and their context. Although Kant’s career spanned more than half a century-from the first texts in 1746 to his final notes in 1801, only his late and “critical” writings, from 1781 to 1790, have received attention. Kant’s pre-critical writings, by contrast, remain largely unknown. The Philosophy of the Young Kant tries to fill this gap by tracing his early pursuits: part I deals with Kant’s starting point and original question, the nature of energy; part II explores his quest for an answer, the “pre-critical project” of the 1750s; and part III traces the climax of the project in the 1760s and Kant’s crisis. Kant explored the interplay of force and continuum, the evolution from chaos to complexity, the ontological commercium of power points, and the dynamic patterns of matter, space, and autonomy. These early efforts had been widely dismissed as incoherent and misguided. But Kant’s pre-critical ideas actually form a coherent project, a long-term endeavor of combining a verifiable account of physical nature with fitting conceptions of purpose, freedom, and God. In retrospect, his early ideas anticipated numerous fundamental discoveries in fields as diverse as climate studies, ecology, particle physics, and cosmology. The book concludes that Kant’s pre-critical project is more timely and informative than expected, and that an acquaintance with his radically innovative starting point is indispensable for an appreciation of the depth of his oeuvre.

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