Possible Experience: Understanding Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

Possible Experience: Understanding Kant's Critique of Pure Reason by Collins, Arthur. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780520214996.

Arthur Collinss succinct, revisionist exposition of Kants Critique of Pure Reason brings a new clarity to this notoriously difficult text. Until recently most readers, ascribing broadly Cartesian assumptions to Kant, have concluded that the Critique advances an idealist philosophy, because Kant calls it "transcendental idealism" and because the work abounds in apparent confirmations of that interpretation. Collins maintains not only that this reading of Kant is false but also that it conceals Kants real achievements. To counter it, he addresses the themes and passages in the Critique that seem to require an idealist thesis and shows how they may be better understood without ascribing any idealist philosophy to Kant. His account coheres with Kants explicit "refutations" of idealism, it fits Kants rejection of the imputation of idealism to him by early critics and readers, and it validates Kants contention that the second edition of the Critique changes the expression but not the doctrine of the first.