In this book, Bryan Wesley Hall breaks new ground in Kant scholarship, exploring the gap in Kant’s Critical philosophy in relation to his post-Critical work by turning to Kant’s final, unpublished work, the so-called Opus Postumum. Although Kant considered this project to be the "keystone" of his philosophical efforts, it has been largely neglected by scholars. Hall argues that only by understanding the Opus Postumum can we fully comprehend both Kant’s mature view as well as his Critical project. In letters from 1798, Kant claims to have discovered a "gap" in the Critical philosophy that requires effecting a "transition from the metaphysical foundations of natural science to physics"; unfortunately, Kant does not make clear exactly what this gap is or how the transition is supposed to fill the gap. To resolve these issues, Hall draws on the Opus Postumum, arguing that Kant’s transition project can solve certain perennial problems with the Critical philosophy. This volume provides a powerful alternative to all current interpretations of the Opus Postumum, arguing that Kant’s transition project is best seen as the post-Critical culmination of his Critical philosophy. Hall carefully examines the deep connections between the Opus Postumum and the view Kant develops in the Critique of Pure Reason, to suggest that properly understanding the post-Critical Kant will significantly revise our view of Kant’s Critical period.

This book offers new perspectives on the theoretical elements of the Opus postumum (OP), Kant’s project of a final work which remained unknown until eighty years after his death. The contributors read the OP as a central work in establishing the relation between Kant’s transcendental philosophy, his natural philosophy, practical philosophy, philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and his broader epistemology. Interpreting the OP is an important task because it helps reveal how Kant himself tried to correct and develop his critical philosophy. It also sheds light on the foundational role of the three Critiques for other philosophical inquiries, as well as the unified philosophical system that Kant sought to establish. The chapters in this volume address a range of topics relevant to the epistemological and theoretical problems raised in the OP, including the transition from the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science to physics as an answer to a deficiency in critical thought; the notion of ether and, more specifically, its transcendental deduction; self-affection and the self-positing of the subject; and the idea of God and the system of ideas in the highest standpoint of transcendental philosophy. Perspectives on Kant’s Opus postumum will be of interest to upper-level students and scholars working on Kant.

Kant's defence of religion and attempts to reconcile faith with reason position him as a moderate Enlightenment thinker in existing scholarship. Challenging this view and reconceptualising Kant's religion along rationalist lines, Anna Tomaszewska sheds light on its affinities with the ideas of the radical Enlightenment, originating in the work of Baruch Spinoza and understood as a critique of divine revelation. Distinguishing the epistemological, ethical and political aspects of such a critique, Tomaszewska shows how Kant's defence of religion consists of rationalizing its core tenets and establishing morality as the essence of religious faith. She aligns him with other early modern rationalists and German Spinozists and reveals the significance for contemporary political philosophy. Providing reasons for prioritizing freedom of thought, and hence religious criticism, over an unqualified freedom of belief, Kant's theology approximates the secularising tendency of the radical Enlightenment. Here is an understanding of how the shift towards a secular outlook in Western culture was shaped by attempts to rationalize rather than uproot Christianity.

Religion has had notable and renewed prominence in contemporary public and political life. Religious questions have also been freshly examined in philosophy and theology, the natural sciences, the social sciences, psychology, phenomenology, politics and the arts. These fields reflect complex, multi-disciplinary understandings of religion, some hostile, some accommodating. For religious education this has all contributed to its own international renaissance. Religious education, in ensuring it is contemporary, shares with these fields the same criticality, the same distance between the study of religion and the religious life. Yet what are the grounds of this modern religious education? Through a systematic historical and contemporary cross-disciplinary analysis, answering this question is the ambitious task of the book. Chapters include: philosophy, theology and religious education the natural sciences and religious education the social sciences and religious education psychology, spirituality and religious education phenomenology and religious education the politics of religious education the aesthetics of religious education. The central problem of all modern religious education remains this: what are the grounds of religious education when religious education is no longer grounded in the religious life, in the life of the holy? Although this primarily appears to be an epistemological problem, it soon becomes a moral and existential one. The book will be of key interest to teachers, theorists and researchers working in religious education.

Immanuel Kant is strict about the limits of self-knowledge: our inner sense gives us only appearances, never the reality, of ourselves. Kant may seem to begin his inquiries with an uncritical conception of cognitive limits, but in Kant and the Subject of Critique, Avery Goldman argues that, even for Kant, a reflective act must take place before any judgment occurs. Building on Kant's metaphysics, which uses the soul, the world, and God as regulative principles, Goldman demonstrates how Kant can open doors to reflection, analysis, language, sensibility, and understanding. By establishing a regulative self, Goldman offers a way to bring unity to the subject through Kant's seemingly circular reasoning, allowing for critique and, ultimately, knowledge.