Kant's Elliptical Path

Kant's Elliptical Path explores the main stages and key concepts in the development of Kant's Critical philosophy, from the early 1760s to the 1790s. Karl Ameriks provides a detailed and concise account of the main ways in which the later Critical works provide a plausible defence of the conception of humanity's fundamental end that Kant turned to after reading Rousseau in the 1760s. Separate essays are devoted to each of the three Critiques, as well as to earlier notes and lectures and several of Kant's later writings on history and religion. A final section devotes three chapters to post-Kantian developments in German Romanticism, accounts of tragedy up through Nietzsche, and contemporary philosophy. The theme of an elliptical path is shown to be relevant to these writers as well as to many aspects of Kant's own life and work. The topics of the book include fundamental issues in epistemology and metaphysics, with a new defense of the Amerik's 'moderate' interpretation of transcendental idealism. Other essays evaluate Kant's concept of will and reliance on a 'fact of reason' in his practical philosophy, as well as his critique of traditional theodicies, and the historical character of his defense of religion and the concepts of creation and hope within 'the boundaries of mere reason'. Kant's Elliptical Path will be of value to historians of modern philosophy and Kant scholars, while its treatment of several literary figures and issues in aesthetics, politics, history, and theology make it relevant to readers outside of philosophy.

1 - Kant, Human Nature, and History after Rousseau
2 - Reason, Reality, and Religion in the Early Development of Kant's Ethics
3 - Kant's Idealism on a Moderate Interpretation
4 - On Reconciling the Transcendental Turn and Kant's Idealism
5 - Idealism and Kantian Persons: Spinoza, Jacobi, and Schleiermacher
6 - Kant's Ambivalent Cosmopolitanism
7 - Is Practical Justification in Kant Ultimately Dogmatic?
8 - Ambiguities in the Will: Kant and Reinhold, Briefe 2
9 - The Purposive Development of Human Capacities
10 - Kant's Fateful Reviews of Herder's Ideas
11 - The End of the Critiques: Kant's Moral "Creationism"
12 - Kant and the End of Theodicy
13 - On the Extension of Kant's Elliptical Path in Hölderlin and Novalis
14 - Kant, Nietzsche, and the Tragic Turn in Late Modern Philosophy
15 - Interpretation After Kant

Karl Ameriks completed his PhD in Philosophy at Yale University. He has held positions in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame since 1973, and is now McMahon-Hank Professor of Philosophy. He has acted as President of the North American Kant Society, and President of the American Philosophical Association, Central Division. Ameriks is the co-editor of Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy, and author of Kant's Theory of Mind (Clarendon, 2000), Interpreting Kant's Critiques (Clarendon, 2003), and Kant and the Historical Turn (Clarendon, 2006).