Abstract

Throughout the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant locates his position relative to those of his predecessors and near contemporaries. Save for Spinoza, all the ‘greats’ of the early modern canon put in appearances. But while Kant’s idiom is respectful—Hume is referred to as ‘celebrated’ ; Berkeley is characterised as ‘good’ ; both Locke and Leibniz are called ‘illustrious’ —this ‘language of good will’ recalls Mark Antony’s ‘honourable man’. In fact, the debt Kant acknowledges to the prior toilers is largely negative: the earlier thinkers adhere to views whose correction or rejection enabled Kant to win through to the truth.