Kant's Modern Debates

Resituating Kant’s work within the Western modern historical tradition provides insight into the originality of his views against the background of pervasive intellectual discussions in the 18th century.

Catalina González embeds essential aspects of Kant’s epistemology, metaphysics, morals, and aesthetics into their broader historical contexts, that is, into philosophical debates and discussions that were central to modernity but have not been explored in sufficient detail by Kantian scholarship. These contexts include disputes between skeptics and anti-skeptics, debates around deism and natural theology, controversies on animal minds, discussions about the foundations of morality, and aesthetic conversations around the notion of the sublime.

The book’s historical perspective is further supplied by a set of methodological reflections drawn from the heterogeneous field of studies of “intellectual history.” Specifically, this book profits from historiographical tools from different approaches to intellectual history, such as the perspective of the Cambridge School of Political Thought or that of German Begriffsfgeschichte, and from a wide variety of historians of philosophy such as Quentin Skinner, J. G. A. Pocock, Reinhart Koselleck, Leo Strauss, Hans Blumenberg, and Hannah Arendt, who, with different emphases and preoccupations, have reflected on the best historical methods by which to approach philosophical authors, concepts, and issues from the past. The author also uses analytical tools from rhetorical studies to understand the language and persuasive aims of the relevant 18th-century discussions.

These views are useful to shed light on the historical formation of specific aspects of Kant’s thought and to evaluate their novelty.

Author Biography

Catalina González Quintero is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of the Andes, Colombia.