Kant's Elliptical Path: On the Stages, Limits, and Aftermath of His Philosophy

FAIN: FA-55101-10

Karl Ameriks
University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame, IN 46556-4635)

I intend to complete a book that provides a new perspective on the development of Kant's Critical philosophy and compares it with the approach of post-Kantian philosophy. The book is called Kant's Elliptical Path because it argues that Kant's pre-Critical reflections from the 1760s reveal a rationalist, objectivist, and teleological position that carries into his whole Critical period. The main conclusions of the three Critiques of this period, going into the 1790s, are closely analyzed and defended as significant because of the clarifications that they bring to Kant's terminology and the tools they provide for his argumentative method, even though their final result essentially brings him back to his early deeply teleological position. I defend Kant against common criticisms of his doctrines as overly subjective (or not subjective enough), but I end the book by also defending the value of the anti-teleological approach of contemporary post-Kantian philosophers.

Media Coverage

(Media Coverage)
Date: 3/10/2012

Associated Products

Kant's Elliptical Path (Book)
Title: Kant's Elliptical Path
Author: Karl Ameriks
Abstract: The chapters of this book concern aspects of Kant's philosophy as it developed from the 1760s to the end of his career. The distinctive argument of the book is that this development repeatedly made use, at several different levels, of the notion of an "elliptical path," and that this notion has great relevance for other figures related to Kant's work.
Year: 2012
Access Model: also to be on Oxford Scholarship Online
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Type: Single author monograph
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

Prizes

Walter de Gruyter Kant Lecture Prize
Date: 12/27/2014
Organization: American Philosophical Association
Abstract: De Gruyter has a long history of publishing Kant scholarship and embraces philosophical work in the Kantian tradition in the broadest sense. To promote and foster the Kantian legacy, the Walter De Gruyter Stiftung—an independent foundation that holds shares in De Gruyter—has made a grant to the American Philosophical Association to organize an annual Walter de Gruyter Stiftung Kant Lecture Series for a period of five years beginning in 2013 with possibility for renewal. The De Gruyter Stiftung explicitly intends the Walter de Gruyter Stiftung Kant Lecture Series to be open to a broad approach to Kantian philosophy across the philosophical disciplines. This may also include contemporary philosophical work in the Kantian tradition. The Walter de Gruyter Stiftung Kant Lecture Series are offered every year at a divisional meeting on a rotating basis.

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