Book Review: Kant and the Historical Turn
A review of Karl Ameriks' Kant and the Historical Turn: Philosophy As Critical Interpretation
The history of science is largely irrelevant to its contemporary practice, while the history of literature is an essential feature of the modern study of the field, but what precisely is — or should be — the relation between philosophy and its history? This is the central question that Karl Ameriks poses in his marvelously rich new book, Kant and the Historical Turn, and the answer to it serves as the guiding thread that links the work's thirteen essays. For Ameriks, the question of the role of the past in the contemporary practice of philosophy is no idle matter; rather, he suggests that it stands as the central problem that philosophy as a whole must answer. Part of what makes Kant and the Historical Turn so interesting, then, is that the solution it proposes calls for a thoroughgoing reconception of what the practice of philosophy ought to involve.