Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

This book presents a fresh view of the Kantian and analytic traditions that have dominated continental European and Anglo-American philosophy over the last two centuries, and of the relation between them. The rise of analytic philosophy decisively marked the end of the hundred-year dominance of Immanuel Kant's philosophy in Europe. However, the book shows that the analytic tradition also emerged from Kant's philosophy in the sense that its members were able to define and legitimate their ideas only by means of an intensive, extended engagement with, and a partial or complete rejection of, the Critical Philosophy. This book therefore comprises both an interpretative study of Kant's massive and seminal Critique of Pure Reason and a critical essay on the historical foundations of analytic philosophy from Gottlob Frege to Willard Van Orman Quine.