Abstract

Usually, the history of philosophy in the first two decades after the publication of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason) in May 1781 is seen as little more than commentary upon and criticism of Kant's classic text. It is chiefly a story about how Kant's successors tried to defend and systematize, or criticize and dismember, his philosophy. The main theme of this story is the central outstanding problem of Kant's philosophy: the transcendental deduction, the problem of the possibility of empirical knowledge. The various approaches to this problem, their formation and demise, is essentially the history of the Kantian philosophy itself. Such, at any rate, is the picture that emerges from the solid studies of Karl Rosenkranz, Johannes Erdmann, Nicolai Hartmann, Josiah Royce, Richard Kroner, and Ernst Cassirer.