Kant and the Empiricists Understanding Understanding [Hardcover]

Wayne Waxman here presents an ambitious and comprehensive attempt to link the philosophers of what are known as the British Empiricists--Locke, Berkeley, and Hume--to the philosophy of German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Much has been written about all these thinkers, who are among the most influential figures in the Western tradition. Waxman argues that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Kant is actually the culmination of the British empiricist program and that he shares their methodological assumptions and basic convictions about human thought and knowledge.

...an exciting story, told with clarity and an enthusiasm that is catching. --Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

Instead of catering to our current (and perhaps short-lived) intuitions, Waxman has tried to accurately represent the views of past philosophers, and he has produced a work that is challenging and illuminating as a result. --Humane Studies Review

Kant and the Empiricistsconstitutes a fascinating, original, and highly distinctive project in the history of philosophy. It connects Kant to the British Empiricists from a Kantian perspective with a degree of sophistication and textual argumentation that surpasses anything that has been done before. Comprehensive in scope, it aims to show how Kant's transcendental philosophy constitutes a continuation and culmination (of a particular kind) of a line of thought that it traces through the three canonical 'British Empiricists'--Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. In recent years there has been considerable debate and discussion between 'Humeans' and 'Kantians' in ethics, much to the mutual benefit of both. However, there has not been a similar amount of cross-fertilizing discussion between 'Humeans' and 'Kantians' in metaphysics and epistemology. This book provides the basis for initiating such a discussion.
--Don Garrett, New York University

Waxman is not the first to connect Kant closely with Locke,lSç