Kant's Elliptical Path, by KarlAmeriks. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2012, xiv + 365 pp. ISBN 978‐0‐19‐969369‐6 pb $45

Abstract

Reviews Kant’s Elliptical Path, by Karl Ameriks. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2012, xiv + 365 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-969369-6 pb $45 Ameriks’ latest volume represents yet another major contribution to our understanding of Kant and his place within the history of philosophy. 1 Ostensibly, Kant’s Elliptical Path is a scholarly treatment of the development of Kant’s thought throughout his career. It assuredly is that, but it is also much more, since it plumbs the depths of Kant’s entire Critical project by revealing the crucial systematic roles of freedom, reason, and religion, and shows their relevance both for the course of post-Kantian German philosophy throughout the nineteenth century and for our philosophical interests and ambitions today. Along the way, we are treated to an unusually broad range of kinds of discussion: detailed interpretations of particular passages that can appear problematic or are often misunderstood, remarks about the linguistic nuances of German terms which can easily get lost in translation, helpful interpretive hypotheses regarding Kant’s views on crucial points, and, of course, broader considerations of Kant’s overall project and commitments. Ameriks’ book comprises an introduction and then fifteen substantive chapters, which are divided into three parts. The introduction offers an innovative narrative of Kant’s overall development that provides an indispensible context for each of the parts and chapters that follow. Its defining claim is that once Kant was ‘turned around’ by reading Rousseau in 1763–4, his basic views, e.g., about the primacy of practical reason and the importance of absolute (libertarian) freedom, morality, and certain religious beliefs (involving God and immortality), did not change fundamentally, even if later developments (such as Transcendental Idealism) proved to be ‘ideal means [. . .] to fill out a systematic defense that allows for a return to his deepest pre-systematic beliefs’ (p. 1). Crucial to Ameriks’ understanding of Kant’s development, however, is not only that Rousseau was important and that there is a basic continuity to some fundamental aspects of Kant’s thought, points on which many (if not all) scholars agree, but also that there is an elliptical movement to Kant’s career, with the ‘heavens above’ and the moral ‘law within’ serving as distinct foci, that precludes either a simple linear or purely circular movement, because of various (theoretical and practical) complications that take Kant further away from his starting point before he is able to return to it. Further, late in the book Ameriks uses the image of an elliptical path to put much of post-Kantian philosophy into context, including figures such as Reinhold, the German Idealists (Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel), the early German Romantics (Novalis, Holderlin, and Schlegel), Nietzsche, and various contempo- rary philosophers (such as MacIntyre, Cavell, Taylor, and Frank). Ameriks’ narrative is thus not restricted to Kant, but provides a useful perspective well beyond, one that he even takes to recommend a certain conception of hermeneutical philosophy today. The first part, on Kant’s pre-Critical period, has a first chapter, ‘Kant, Human Nature, and History after Rousseau,’ which describes various ways in which Rousseau influenced European Journal of Philosophy ••:•• ISSN 0966-8373 pp. ••–•• © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd