A Kant Dictionary

From A to Z, here is a dictionary on Kant's philosophy which, surprisingly enough, is quite helpful. For someone who is trying to gain a better understanding of Kant's philosophy this text is an invaluable tool to have handy. It is easy to use (since it is an A to Z topical dictionary) and contains a few extra features such as an Introduction on Kant and the Language of Philosophy, an article on Kant and the 'Age of Criticism,' a very handy chronology of Kant's published writings, a section called "Works Referred to in the Text" which sites all the works used to put this dictionary together, a recommended reading list (quite nice feature), and an index of philosophers and philosophical concepts.Thus, for a text dealing with Kant, the reader gets not only great information on Kant's philosophy, but on his actual works, his concepts, his time period, and information on those philosophers who preceded and followed him.What is more, a student can use this text to branch out into deeper study on Kant's philosophy due to the recommended reading, but also by way of the text itself. What I mean is, the entries include cross references, text abbreviations where the information (or concept) can be found in Kant's work, and the German origin of the entry/word/concept itself.Overall, this is a very nice edition to anyone's philosophical library. Moreover, it is one of the better reference works I have seen or used in my research of Immanuel Kant. I highly recommend this text.

Very good book. Came in great condition. Book helped clarify Kant’s elaborate terminology and the author used history and relative philosophical terms to explain Kant simply.

The best of the Kant dictionaries.

whether it's your first experience with kant, or you're revisiting him upon reading an essay about him: this book is very useful. it highlights kant's vocabulary in alphabetical order with a little definition of each word. BUT,more importantly, it has references to WHERE the word gets used. and the dictionary spans his entire career. so, it's an excellent reference.the binding is a bit stiff.but, still, really useful.

A very useful, informative companion to Kant's works.

Very helpful aid.

I forget the exact words and who said them, but a more recent philosopher once observed that Kant wrote for the 'salvation of the ordinary man, in words that the ordinary man could not possibly understand'. This problem, compounded by the even more abstruse interpretations of Kantian terminology offered by contemporary analytic philosophers, exacerbates the notorious difficulties in following the meaning of the terminology employed by Kant in his arguments in the way that: 1) Kant intended them to be understood, and 2) allows one to meaningfully participate in contemporary discourse surrounding this essential work. Kant is a thinker, like Spinoza before him, whom one must come to terms with. Yet, to understand the terms he uses, one must have a quick, dictionary reference, ready to hand - immediate access to definitions of the terms as one reads. This need is met here. While excellent works like the widely acclaimed CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO KANT are wonderful aids in helping us understand these seminal and challenging texts, they are not ordered in the reference style format which is needed when reading Kant.Caygill's excellent ancillary work, written in clear, unencumbered prose, is worthy of the highest approbation. I ask the prospective reader: Where else are you going to find explanations of all the terminology in Kant, and all the abbreviations used in the critical literature, critically juried by some of the top Kant scholars in the world, arranged in alphabetical order, all in one well-ordered, easily accessed volume?Ironically, as Caygill informs us, in the entry for "definition", that, decribing definition as the presentation of the "...the complete, original concept of a thing within the limits of its concept", Kant "...goes to some length to show that, strictly speaking, there can be no philosophical definitions. Empirical concepts cannot be defined because it is impossible to know their precise limits, nor is it possible to be certain that they are original. They may be explicated by making their contents explicit, but they do not fulfill the criteria of definition. Nor do a priori concepts, since it is impossible to be certain that analysis has been completely effected: "the completeness of the analysis of my concept is always in doubt , and a multiplicity of suitable examples suffices only to make the completeness probable, never to make it apodeictically certain". (CPR A 729/ B 757)Albeit, Caygill does well enough to warrant that there is no one approaching Kant's texts, regardless of their level of expertise (and most of us have relatively little, who would not be privileged to have this comprehensive reference ready-to-hand.

This book would be very useful to you if you are taking an undergraduate course in Kantian philosophy. If you're having trouble remembering what Kant means when he uses the words "transcendentalism" and "ethics" and "pure reason" and stuff like that, this book will be a good resource. And the definitions aren't just a few words, many are more than a page. The only warning I would place on this book is that many of the definitions provided are interpretive of the philosophy rather than just descriptive. So that could cause a problem if you have a professor who is fully persuaded in his own interpretation. But overall this is a good and helpful book to have to quickly reacquaint yourself with most of Kant's main philosophical ideas and terms.

A few years ago I tried to read Kemp Smith's translation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and ground to a halt after about a hundred pages, feeling very confused. Recently, I decided to try again with Pluhar's newer translation. This was a happy choice, as it is blessed with a fine introduction and is a far more consistent translation. But I still found the book too difficult, and therefore started dipping into the secondary literature. This included the guidebooks by Gardner & Kemp Smith, and half a dozen others. They only added to the confusion because they are often (i) as difficult to read as Kant (ii) Not detailed enough (iii) Pushing their own views. Fortunately I came across this dictionary which is an amazing work of scholarship. The main problem with Kant, I feel, is that he uses words like "category" and "cognition" without defining them. And his definitions are very different from the common understanding of these words today. The, in reprospect obvious, solution is to use a dictionary that provides Kant's definitions. This is what Caygill does. He often produces a short essay when defining key words, because you need to know, for example, how Aristotle and others, defined category before you can understand Kant's definition. So although his entries might seem lengthy at times, this approach is usually necessary.So forget all the misleading gudebooks, use this dictionary to guide you when you can't understand Kant's meaning. With its help I managed to finish Kant's magnum opus with, from my viewpoint, an adequate understanding.

Caygill has caught not only the essential keywords to Kant's central texts but also their historical and personal inflections, nuances, variables, contradictions and evolution throughout Kant's entire corpus - as critique.Kant's developing and contradictory thoughts regarding Time, his indebtedness to Arnauld for a new concept of Logic that broke with antiquity whilst holding on to classical essentials, amongst several other entries including one on the 12 principles of 'acroamata' which the 'Novalis' review could have benefitted from, are rigorously referenced throughout Kant's available works, illustrating variables of thought and meaning that one meets in specific texts such as CPR. The historical references going back into philosophical tradition which Kant responds to or draws from are energetic, fascinating and curious.This is not a dictionary aiming at world domination of definitive Kantian meanings but an unashamed enquiry into the problematics and possibilities of Kant - a work, then, of true scholarship. Caygill's concept of dictionary as genre outstandingly rejects the didactic superiority of a hypertext sitting above the text with the monumental phallic power of the erudite, which always disappoints despite the inflated grandiosity of its imaginary register. With Caygill, we find the hope of understanding - through a highly informed and well networked knowledgebase, a discursive linking of signposts which point to further avenues of thoughts, meanings and histories which audio surround sound this enigmatic, hard to listen to, hard to understand, Master Philosopher Kant.And it is that openness, the refusal to adopt the fake postures of pedagogic omnipotence or fall into the horrible, dull, impotent drone of didactic 'argument' swamping secondary literature, which leaves Caygill's dictionary an inspirational breath of fresh air, genuine thinking and enlightenment, refusing the stifling of verbiage and uncritical dogma so prevalent in the academia of docile compliance we have today. The final testimony to his concept of dictionary is the moment when you no longer need it, and find yourself parachute jumping through the text unaided, the view always shifting and changing, the stillness and richness of meanings immense and growing in detail and sensitivity, and the linguistic world of Kant comes closer and closer to you...alive with understanding.

‘Printed by Amazon’ noticeably inferior materials and binding