Imagination in Kant's Critique of Practical Reason

With particular focus on imagination, Bernard Freydberg presents a close reading of Kant's second critique, The Critique of Practical Reason. In an interpretation that is daring as well as rigorous, Freydberg reveals imagination as both its central force and the bridge that links Kant's three critiques. Freydberg's reading offers a powerful challenge to the widespread view that Kant's ethics calls for rigid, self-denying obedience. Here, to the contrary, the search for self-fulfillment becomes an enormously creative endeavor once imagination is understood as the heart of Kantian ethics. Seasoned scholars and newer students will find a surprising and provocative view of Kant's ethics in this straightforward and accessible book.

Bernard Freydberg is Professor of Philosophy at Slippery Rock University. He is author of Imagination and Depth in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason; The Play of the Platonic Dialogues; and Provocative Form in Plato, Kant, Nietzsche (and Others).

Contents

Acknowledgments

Note on the Text and on Page References

Prologue. From the Critique of Pure Reason to the Critique of Practical Reason

Introduction. Weapons of War: Preliminary Reflections on the Practical in the Critique of Pure Reason

Part 1. Analytic of Pure Practical Reason

Ch. 1. Principles of Pure Practical Reason: Imagination and Moral "Derivation"

Ch. 2. The Concept of an Object of Pure Practical Reason: Imagination, Good and Evil, and the Typic

Ch. 3. The Incentives (Triebfeder) of Pure Practical Reason: Incentive-Creating Imagination and Moral Feeling

Part 2. Dialectic and Methodology of Pure Practical Reason

Ch. 4. Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason in General and Imagination

Ch. 5. Imagination and the Postulates of Immortality and God

Ch. 6. Imagination and the Moral Extension of Reason

Ch. 7. Methodology of Pure Practical Reason: Images and Ecstasy

Conclusion(s)

Epilogue: From the Critique of Practical Reason to the Critique of Judgment

Notes

Bibliography

Index