1st Edition

A Guide to Kant’s Psychologism via Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Wittgenstein

By Wayne Waxman Copyright 2019
    350 Pages
    by Routledge

    350 Pages
    by Routledge

    This book presents an interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason as a priori psychologism. It groups Kant’s philosophy together with those of the British empiricists—Locke, Berkeley, and Hume—in a single line of psychologistic succession and offers a clear explanation of how Kant’s psychologism differs from psychology and idealism. The book reconciles Kant’s philosophy with subsequent developments in science and mathematics, including post-Fregean mathematical logic, non-Euclidean geometry, and both relativity and quantum theory. It also relates Kant’s psychologism to Wittgenstein’s later conception of language. Finally, the author reveals the ways in which Kant’s philosophy dovetails with contemporary scientific theorizing about the natural phenomenon of consciousness and its place in nature. This book will be of interest to Kant scholars and historians of philosophy working on the British empiricists.

    Introduction





    Chapter 1: Breaking the Mold





    Part I: The Path to Kant: Psychologism and Conventionalism





    Chapter 2: Locke’s Oyster





    Chapter 3: Berekely’s Vision





    Chapter 4: Hume’s Cement





    Chapter 5: From Hume to Kant via Wittgenstein





    Part II: Nature in Mind: Through Kant’s I’s





    Chapter 6: The Kantian Cogito





    Chapter 7: The Logical I





    Chapter 8: The Aesthetic I





    Chapter 9: The Objective I





    Chapter 10: The I of Nature





    Conclusion

    Biography

    Wayne Waxman is the author of Kant’s Anatomy of the Intelligent Mind, Kant and the Empiricists, Hume’s Theory of Consciousness, and Kant’s Model of the Mind. He is retired and lives in New Zealand.