Human Nature Review

Strawson and Kant is a collection of articles originally presented at the Kant Society’s 1999 conference, which was dedicated to Strawson. The articles discuss issues related to Strawson’s interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, the rise of interest in metaphysics started by Strawson’s Individuals, and key issues in Strawson’s analytic Kantianism. There are also articles in the collection which focus on just one of the two philosophers. The collection starts with a contribution by Strawson himself in which he describes the inspiration he has received from Critique of Pure Reason. The collection demands a fair amount of knowledge of both Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and of Strawson’s Individuals. Knowledge of the main debates sparked by Strawson’s interpretation of Kant in Bounds of Sense and the debate of transcendental arguments sparked by Individuals will also be helpful, as none of these original arguments are spelled out in the articles. For readers familiar with these debates, however, I think the collection is a excellent source of new research on both Kant interpretation and Strawson’s Kantian philosophy. One of the themes which I found was especially well treated by articles in the collection is on the differences and similarities between the main concern of the projects of descriptive metaphysics in Kant and Strawson. This topic is discussed especially by Glock and Bird’s articles. Glock starts his article by sketching the development of Kantian thoughts from the 1920s to the publication of Individuals. In the second part of the article he defends Strawson’s analytical Kantianism against some common criticisms. Firstly, he argues that Kant and Strawson’s main concern in the Critique of Pure Reason and in Individuals respectively are more similar than has often been thought. He argues that Kant’s main concern is with defending metaphysical knowledge especially with regards to the possibility of the synthetic a priori. The sceptic Kant aims to answer, is therefore one who challenges metaphysical knowledge, and not one who challenges everyday empirical knowledge. In the same way, the sceptic