Kant and the Capacity to Judge : Sensibility and Discursivity in the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason

Rating:
Summary: A very detail-oriented reading of the First Critique
Review: Longuenesse's book fills an important hole Kant's scholarship, but does not deal systematically with the status of judgment in Kant. The book is very much focused on the first Critique. If you are interested in the 3rd Critique, read Makkreel's or Allison's books on the subject. The latter will probably make Longuenesse's views on reflective vs. determinate judgment clearer than reading Longuenesse's book itself, even as Allison's own reading is somewhat questionable in seeing only aesthetic and teleological judgments as 'merely reflective.' If you are interested in practical judgments in Kant, write the book yourself.

Rating:
Summary: Longuenesse's Kant
Review: Longuenesse's work is the most important work on Kant's epistemology in the 1990's. She makes an original contribution both to Kant's logic and, perhaps more importantly, to his use of the notion of imagination. The connection between imagination and judgment is a thorny issue in Kant, but Longuenesse stakes out a position in this regard that must be addressed by any serious scholar in this area.

Rating:
Summary: dense
Review: This book is an impressive accomplishment: it is perhaps the most philosophically rich and historically informed treatment of Kant's account of the epistemic and semantic function of the forms of judgment available. If you make it through, you'll learn at least as much as you ever wanted to know (if not more) about Kant's logic, and his treatment of the cognitive role of imagination. To my knowledge, no one has been able to give such a far-reaching account of Kant's table of judgments, and its place in his thought as a whole (both in the first and third Critiques). Unlike interpreters of an "analytic" bent, Longuenesse takes very seriously the psychological side of Kant's idiom. But that doesn't imply that she has much in common with those readers who see in Kant a forerunner of cognitive science (e.g., Kitcher). Instead, she finds in Kant a kind of Aristotelianism. Readers accustomed to thinking of Kant as the "all-crushing" critic of metaphysics will be surprised to find the details of her interpretation hanging at least partially on the plausbility of attributing to him a rational psychology that enlists a teleological vocabulary to do a lot of its heavy lifting. Readers may also become frustrated with the extent to which her interpretation makes use of idiosyncratic expressions--such as "reflected under concepts"--that don't really get explained. This reader did, anyway... And it's quite strange that determining judgments end up getting characterized as a species of reflection. For just about any reader, the book is tough going. In fact, by virtue of the sheer amount of historical and textual detail, Longuenesse's commentary threatens to eclipse the work it's meant to explicate. Readers looking for something to help them slog through the first Critique should look elsewhere. Only grad students and professors specializing in the study of Kant are likely to find this accessible at all. Plus, Longuenesse so rarely employs anything but the vocabulary of 18th century philosophy, philosophers and students used to a more contemporary vocabulary will likely find very few points of entry. The specialists, however, will find this at least as fascinating as it is difficult. It is one of the very few commentaries that deserves to be treated as required reading. Those who work through it are unlikely to look at the "Critique of Pure Reason" in the same way again.