Kant's Analytic

Of the two reviews on this page which precede this one, one awards one star, the other five. I would like to propose a test which will help you decide to which of those two to give more credence. The first sentence in the Kemp Smith translation of the Critique of Pure Reason reads: "In whatever manner and by whatever means a mode of knowledge may relate to objects, intuition is that through which it is in immediate relation to them, and to which all thought as a means is directed." If that sentence fills you with a thrill of anticipation, then you should take the one star review very seriously and approach Bennett's book with a lot of scepticism. If, on the other hand, the sentence makes you immediately suspicious that that you are going to be subjected to a lot of very misty thinking from which useful insights can only be drawn after much hard work and making grudging allowance for bad writing and imprecise thought....well, then you should pay attention to the five star review and, more particularly, to the second of the Editorial Reviews listed above. Bennett does a wonderful job of subjecting Kant's work to critical review, teasing out the possible meanings which might be attributed to his often very vague prose, and then making clear which of those possible meanings should be taken seriously and which should be discarded as mistaken or meaningless. I would like to add my enthusiastic agreement to the editorial review's summary: "This is splendid, and a necessary corrective to that extraordinary isolation in which Kant tends to be islanded, partly indeed, by his own unique qualities, but partly by oceans of the wrong kind of respect. Bennett, continuously engaging his great antagonist, shows the right kind."