Kant: A Revolution in Thinking

⚖The case for it

Adam Kirsch reviewed it in The New Yorker as an expert and engaging introduction, and the magazine named it a Best Book of the Year. Paul Guyer, co-editor and translator of the Cambridge Edition of Kant's works, said he knows of no better introduction to Kant for general readers in any language. Robert Brandom and William Egginton supplied similar praise for Harvard. Julian Baggini in the Wall Street Journal called the treatment of Kant's ethics refreshing, arguing that it corrects the caricature of a philosophy that is all head and no heart. Edward Feser, who is hostile to Kant's whole project, still granted that the exposition is 'as accessible as possible without oversimplifying.' G. John Ikenberry in Foreign Affairs valued the account of Kant on shared reality against conflicting moral views. Readers agree: 4.27 on Goodreads across 142 ratings, where one called it the clearest presentation of Kant's thought he had met.

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

Edward Feser, in the Claremont Review of Books, names what he calls the main weakness: Willaschek 'fails to consider this particular downside of Kant's legacy,' the slide toward relativism and toward a godlike conception of human reason. Feser also thinks the running order is wrong, since Kant's ethics reads best through his metaphysics rather than ahead of it. Dorothea Winter, in humanismus aktuell, presses the same structural point from the other side: she is surprised to find the Critique of Pure Reason analysed only in the closing chapters, and wishes the work had been given more room, since simplification strains against a book of that depth. Elizabeth Stice at Orange Blossom Ordinary found the biography thin, with little fresh insight into Kant's choices or his friendships. A three-star Goodreads reader objected that the ordering implies Kant's ethics grows out of his politics, and wanted harder engagement with the race and gender writings. Devoted Kantians and professional philosophers are unlikely to find much here that is new to them.

— the honest librarian

8h

honest hours

11

sittings