Now let me turn to a more important matter, namely my forthcoming lecture series on the Critique of Pure Reason. The launch of the series is only five weeks away, not to soon to start preparing yourself. In addition to obtaining a copy of the Critique and downloading the e-book version of my commentary, Kant's Theory of Mental Activity, available at amazon.com, you really should review the most important sections of David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature. For purposes of my lectures, there are three sections of the Treatise it would be wise to review. Of course, if you have never read the Treatise, you really should read all of Book I, but perhaps not everyone is as enthusiastic about this project as I.
The three critical passages of the Treatise are Book I, Part iii, sections 3 and 14, and Book I, Part iv, section 2.
Can it be that there are some readers of this blog who will consider this not quite as important as the outcome of the presidential election? I shudder at the thought.
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4 comments:
I like the key-passages from the Treatise.
This Fall semester will be 25 years since my first semester as a full-time graduate student. And, sure enough, I took a seminar on the KrV that year, though I think that was in the Spring. Your citing key passages from Hume reminds me that my professor in that first Kant seminar suggested the following approach to reading the text. First read three key passages: A19/B33 - A22/B36, A50/B74 - A62/B86, and A298/B355 - A320/B377. Then read those three passages again. Then go back to that first passage (which is the very beginning of the Transcendental Aesthetic) and continue on from there. He wanted us to avoid the temptation to read the Prefaces and the Introduction, but he himself couldn't resist talking about the 2nd Edition Preface and the Introduction in his lectures.
My professor also confessed that he had always wanted to teach the KrV by having his students start with the Transcendental Doctrine of Method (which is rarely read) and only then go back to the beginning of the Aesthetic. After all, shouldn't a Rationalist Philosopher normally start with considerations of method? I wonder if he ever tried that out . . .
Professor Wolff --
Have you ever read anything by Annette Baier? I find her writing on Hume to be both delicate and illuminating, particularly her 1991 book, "A Progress of Sentiments." I was introduced to her through the writings of Richard Rorty.
-- Jim
In the first Kant seminar that I took, we began with the Transcendental Doctrine of Method and then proceeded to the prefaces and so on. The lesson that I learned was that the Critique of Pure Reason is the first really hard book in the western cannon. I took two more seminars on it before I had even a glimmer of insight, not to mention lugging around Paton, Kemp-Smith, Körner, Wolff, Bennett, and Strawson.
Now that I think of it, there are two things that I've wondered about. The first is the image of the twelve or so men (!) reading the twelve or so word sentence that is supposed to provide an intuition into the nature of the transcendental unity of apperception. I know that Brenntano and James use it for one reason or another, but where does it come from? The second is the image of the tinted spectacles. I think that Paton uses it, and some others, but again, where does it come from? Just wondering....
I was always of the belief that Brentano invented the example of the sentence. james certainly credits Brentano. The tinted spectacles metaphor is totally misleading and should never be used. I have no idea where it comes from.
All of this will be made very clear in my lectures.
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