Abstract: This volume contains essays on all three main areas of Kant’s work: theoretical philosophy (the first Critique), practical philosophy (the second Critique), and aesthetics (the third Critique). It begins with a substantial, specially written introduction that sets out main themes in the structure and interpretation of Kant’s Critical philosophy. The first part of the book (Chs. 1–5) includes several of the author’s well-known essays on the Critique of Pure Reason, emphasizing Kant’s central theoretical notions of a transcendental deduction and transcendental idealism, and providing an extensive review of recent English and German scholarship in this area. Part II (Chs. 6–11) includes new discussions of the Critique of Practical Reason and its relation to Kant’s other main work in moral theory, the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Part III (Chs. 12–14) focuses on taste and the Critique of Judgment and on the controversial hypothesis that even in this area Kant’s position is fundamentally objective and conceptual. This collection demonstrates in detail how, for understanding the basic structure of any one of Kant’s Critiques, it is extremely helpful to remember its logical and historical relation to Kant’s other Critiques. This book also makes interpretation itself a central issue. Not only does it offer a series of interrelated interpretations of Kant’s main works but it also argues that the difficulty of interpretation itself is a central feature of the Critical philosophy, and that the difficulties of that philosophy have become paradigmatic for modern philosophy in general.

Keywords: aesthetics, conceptuality, Critical philosophy, freedom, interpretation, judgement, moral law, taste, transcendental deduction, transcendental idealism