Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

Catalog description

In this course we shall pursue a close study and critical assessment of Kant's highly original theory of transcendental idealism as it is presented in his seminal work, the Critique of Pure Reason. Specific topics will include, but are not limited to, the nature of human reason, the nature of experience, the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge, the relation between mind and world, the limits of human knowledge, transcendental idealism vs. transcendental realism, varieties of skepticism and responses to them, self-knowledge, the problem of free will, and philosophical method. We shall begin the course by sketching some of the problems that Kant inherited from early modern philosophy and to which he is responding.