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  3. Kant's Late Philosophy of Nature
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Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
March 2023
Print publication year:
2023
Online ISBN:
9781009031028
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009031028
Subjects:
History of Philosophy, Eighteenth-Century Philosophy, Philosophy Texts, Philosophy
Series:
Elements in the Philosophy of Immanuel Kant
Information

Book description

Kant's final drafts, known as his Opus postumum, attempt to make what he calls a 'transition from the metaphysical foundations of natural science to physics.' Interpreters broadly agree that in this project Kant seeks to connect the general a priori principles of natural science, as set out in the major critical works, to the specific results of empirical physics. Beyond this, however, basic interpretative issues remain controversial. This Element outlines a framework that aims to combine the systematic ambition of early twentieth-century readings with the rigor of more recent studies. The author argues that a question that has animated much recent scholarship – which 'gap' in Kant's previous philosophy does the Opus postumum seek to fill? – can be profitably set aside. In its place, renewed attention should be given to a crucial part of the manuscript, fascicles X/XI, and to the problematic 'arrival point' of the transition, namely, Kant's question: What is physics?

References

References

References to Kant’s works are to the volume and page number of the Academy edition, Kant (1902–), except in the case of the Critique of Pure Reason, which is cited according to the A/B edition pagination. Volumes 21–22 of the Academy edition contain the Opus postumum. All translations of Kant’s works are mine. I have compared my translations of the Opus postumum with the Cambridge edition (Kant 1993) when passages are contained therein. Kant’s later insertions and marginal additions are signaled with angle brackets and his deletions with struck-through text.

Kant

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Kant, Immanuel (1993). Opus postumum. Ed. Förster, Eckart, (English) trans. Förster, Eckart and Rosen, Michael. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Kant, Immanuel (2007) Das Bonner Kant-Korpus. https://korpora.zim.uni-duisburg-essen.de/Kant/verzeichnisse-gesamt.html, accessed September 23, 2022.
Kant, Immanuel (2020) Opus postumum Online-Edition. Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften. http://telota.bbaw.de/kant_op/index.html, accessed September 23, 2022.

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