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Summary
Presents an original and rigorous reading of the entire project of Kantian critique, demonstrating the essential role that cosmology plays in Kant and those he influenced.
"Most pivotal in this book is Kerszberg's nuanced account of the relationship between the antinomies of pure reason and the foundations of critique itself. On Kerszberg's reading, the relationship between Kant's Analytic and Dialectic is much more complicated than anyone has recognized. On the basis of his discoveries, Kerszberg is able to clarify the stakes involved in Kant's resistance to the sorts of moves made by his immediate successors (Maimon, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel) as well as to offer a powerful alternative to the Heideggerian reading of Kant. Along the way he offers compelling evidence against many of the standard readings of Kant's philosophy of science, frequently by situating Kant's texts in the context of early modern debates. Throughout, Kerszberg's scholarship is impeccable. The entire book is brilliant." -- Andrew Cutrofello, Loyola University, Chicago
"This book concerns the essential role that the issue of cosmology plays both in Kant's thought and those (especially in continental thought, Husserl and Heidegger) that Kant has affected. Both Husserl and Heidegger, still the most important thinkers in twentieth-century continental thought, briefly (but unsystematically) explored these topics for which now, thanks to Pierre Kerszberg, we have the details. His point is that Kant's project remains both more complicated and more fertile than either of these thinkers grasped, to the detriment of their own general philosophical positions." -- Stephen H. Watson, University of Notre Dame
Pierre Kerszberg is Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of The Invented Universe: The Einstein-De Sitter Controversy (1916-17) and the Rise of Relativistic Cosmology and collaborated on the critical edition of the French translation of Kant: Theory of the Heavens.
Table of Contents
1. Totality, Finitude, and Division
Kant and the Cosmic Concept of Philosophy
Nature and Freedom
Being and Knowing
2. The Mathematical Dream of Philosophy
"I See the Trace of a Man"
The Quarrel between Mathematics and Philosophy
Of Shining Misery in Modern Times
3. An Experiment with Concepts
What are the Objects of Reason?
The Analogy with Copernicus as a Speculative Starting Point
Kant's Cosmological Principle
The Movement and Rest of the Spectator
4. Reversing the Order of Time
The Second Birth of Knowledge
Time from the Transcendental Point of View
The Antinomies as the Life of Reason
5. A Logic of Illusion
Reflecting upon Nothing Determinate: What is a Thing?
The Historical versus the Speculative Background of the First Antinomy
Taking Illusion out of its Hiddenness
On the Logical Employment of Reason
The Transcendental Amplification of the World
From the Natural to the Transcendental Antithetic: The Breakdown of Mathematics
The Critical Solution, or the Doubled Illusion
Dialectic without Nihilism
6. A Reversal of the Reversal
Crossing the Border of Reason
The Future as a Transcendental Problem
Transition to Life
The Antinomy of Life: The Often Foolish Reason
A Solution to the Antinomy, or the Endless Prolegomena
Freedom, Contingency, and Non-sense
The Problem of the Future Reconsidered
7. Lost Illusions
On Concepts Other than Cosmic
The Texture of Our World: Oscillating Between Givenness and Nothingness