1 - The Early Reception of the Third Critique

Summary

This chapter documents the prima facie astonishing fact that the initial reception of the third Critique, in contrast to the other two Critiques, was mostly positive. The reason for this, I suggest, was that the results of Kant’s theory could be seen, even by enemies like Feder, Schulze, and Eberhard, as compatible with the views developed in the rationalist and popular-philosophical traditions. Kant’s insistence on both the novelty of his approach and that the Critique should be understood as the completion of the critical philosophical project, were thus underappreciated. The task for the following chapters is, first, to follow the ways in which Kant arrived at familiar-sounding results within a transcendental framework, and, second, to articulate the sense in which the Critique of Judgment served as the capstone of the other Critiques.