Abstract

This is one of the first volumes to appear in the projected fourteen-volume series, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, under the general editorship of Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. It is also the first translation ever into English of Kant's notorious late reflections on metaphysics and epistemology, dubbed "Opus postumum" by Kant's later editor, Erich Adickes. This is an excellent volume, in format, in content, and in physical presentation. Förster has provided a very clear, concise, and judicious introduction, which describes the history of Kant's manuscript, its composition, its place in Kant's philosophy, and the development of Kant's views and argument contained in it. The body of the text is a generous and representative selection of substantial excerpts from Kant's opus postumum, which fills volumes 21 and 22 of Kant's Gesammelte Schriften, totalling about twelve hundred pages of text. Förster has provided headings for seven sections of this material: "Early leaves and Oktaventwurf," "Toward the Elementary System of the Moving Forces of Matter," "The Ether Proofs," "How is Physics Possible? How is the Transition to Physics Possible?" "The Selbstsetzungslehre," "Practical Self-Positing and the Idea of God," and "What is Transcendental Philosophy?" The body of the text is preceded by a brief but useful bibliography and is followed by factual notes on the excerpted passages, a detailed glossary, a concordance to Ak vols. 21 and 22, and very good indexes of names and subjects. The editorial apparatus makes this volume especially useful, and the translators have certainly achieved their aim of making their translation read at least like Kant wherever it cannot quite read like English.