Posted by Farhang Erfani on September 3rd, 2008
Review of Knowledge, Reason, and Taste: Kant’s Response to Hume
Paul Guyer’s stated aims in this collection of previously published essays are to show that “the philosophical approach Kant developed for showing that our concept of and beliefs about causation have a foundation that Hume denied they have also provides Kant with an approach for addressing the concerns Hume raised about external objects and the self”, and that, beyond the domain of metaphysics proper, “important elements of Kant’s moral philosophy, his aesthetics, and his teleology can be fruitfully read as responses to Hume” (p. 7). These are fairly bland claims, but in the course of establishing them, Guyer presents in short compass his own systematic and comprehensive interpretations of these two thinkers in the areas in which their themes overlap. Here I summarize the basic positions Guyer stakes out for himself in the book’s five chapters, and express a few worries along the way.
