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A review by generalheff
Introducing Kant: A Graphic Guide by Christopher Kul-Want
2.0
I cannot decide what this book wants to be. The format - a "witty graphic guide" (from the blurb) suggests a light, high-level overview of Kant for the uninitiated; but the level of detail, coupled with the brief so extremely dense text, indicates an intended audience of proficient Kant readers. I think this fundamentally stops the book being successful in either regard.
As a book for lay readers the book fails: there is far too much jargon and too little 'setting out the shop' to give the uninitiated any chance in grappling with Kant's notoriously challenging thought. Near the beginning of the book, for example, the authors set out Kant's critical project: "Kant determined his philosophical project as a criticism of reason itself ... the utility of such a critique 'ought properly to be only negative'. By means of 'negative criticism', Kant aimed to expunge any fantasy that knowledge can be self-identical or present to itself.". I defy anyone with only a passing interest in philosophy to understand this. To be fair, the authors do point to a description of the concepts of presence / absence later in the book but I did not find these much use. Furthermore, as someone with a moderate grasp of Kant, I'm not convinced the ideas of presence / absence are critical to a first-order understanding and serve only to confuse matters here.
That leaves the possibility that the book is aimed at more experienced Kant devotees. But the book seems to fall down here too. I find some of the focus misplaced (as with the fixation on presence / absence). Other choices perplexed me: I cannot understand why the distinction of noumenon / phenomenon is not introduced till late in the book despite its importance, particularly for later critics of Kant. I think the authors misuse the term 'transcendental' unhelpfully throughout the start of the book. While transcendent and transcendental are used interchangeably by many authors, the latter is of fundamental importance to Kant - as the framing conditions of experience. These sit at the juncture between the empirical and the transcendent (beyond experience). I think the book does a very poor job either introducing the notion of the transcendental (to my admittedly inexpert eye) or of using it consistently.
As someone with a modicum of Kant experience - having read but not studied in detail the first two critiques - I at first glance thought this work would offer a great mid-level primer on the philosopher. Unfortunately, rather than an enjoyable moderate-difficulty book on Kant, this work couldn't make up its mind and ends up alienating all readers. For the beginner, the book is simply too advanced to be intelligible; for the enterprising amateur, the book engages at times too little and at times too much with certain features of Kant but elucidates none of them well; and for the expert I imagine this book will possibly be considered plain wrong in places, and certainly will not engage Kant on a critical-academic level sufficiently to be of interest. The concept was good, but overall this is a missed opportunity.
As a book for lay readers the book fails: there is far too much jargon and too little 'setting out the shop' to give the uninitiated any chance in grappling with Kant's notoriously challenging thought. Near the beginning of the book, for example, the authors set out Kant's critical project: "Kant determined his philosophical project as a criticism of reason itself ... the utility of such a critique 'ought properly to be only negative'. By means of 'negative criticism', Kant aimed to expunge any fantasy that knowledge can be self-identical or present to itself.". I defy anyone with only a passing interest in philosophy to understand this. To be fair, the authors do point to a description of the concepts of presence / absence later in the book but I did not find these much use. Furthermore, as someone with a moderate grasp of Kant, I'm not convinced the ideas of presence / absence are critical to a first-order understanding and serve only to confuse matters here.
That leaves the possibility that the book is aimed at more experienced Kant devotees. But the book seems to fall down here too. I find some of the focus misplaced (as with the fixation on presence / absence). Other choices perplexed me: I cannot understand why the distinction of noumenon / phenomenon is not introduced till late in the book despite its importance, particularly for later critics of Kant. I think the authors misuse the term 'transcendental' unhelpfully throughout the start of the book. While transcendent and transcendental are used interchangeably by many authors, the latter is of fundamental importance to Kant - as the framing conditions of experience. These sit at the juncture between the empirical and the transcendent (beyond experience). I think the book does a very poor job either introducing the notion of the transcendental (to my admittedly inexpert eye) or of using it consistently.
As someone with a modicum of Kant experience - having read but not studied in detail the first two critiques - I at first glance thought this work would offer a great mid-level primer on the philosopher. Unfortunately, rather than an enjoyable moderate-difficulty book on Kant, this work couldn't make up its mind and ends up alienating all readers. For the beginner, the book is simply too advanced to be intelligible; for the enterprising amateur, the book engages at times too little and at times too much with certain features of Kant but elucidates none of them well; and for the expert I imagine this book will possibly be considered plain wrong in places, and certainly will not engage Kant on a critical-academic level sufficiently to be of interest. The concept was good, but overall this is a missed opportunity.