Corey W. Dyck

Is it possible to explain the existence of evil under the supposition of a supremely good creator? Are we ourselves the cause of most of the suffering that befalls us? Is life generally more painful than it is pleasant, and if so is non-existence preferable to existence? Is happiness ever even attainable? These questions occupied some of the best-known philosophers of the 17th to 19th centuries—figures such as G. W. Leibniz, Pierre Bayle, David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Friedrich Nietzsche. These questions were also richly discussed by writers often since excluded from the philosophical canon, such as Ottobah Cugoano, Mary Astell, and Olga Plumacher. For these thinkers, philosophy was not only a fair-weather friend; it was also a companion in storms and in darkness—it was a way of thinking about, thinking through, and contending with the profoundly unsettling. In this unique and provocative anthology, one will find philosophers bending their intellectual efforts to the darker side of life.

Corey W. Dyck presents a new account of Kant's criticism of the rational investigation of the soul in his monumental Critique of Pure Reason, in light of its eighteenth-century German context. When characterizing the rational psychology that is Kant's target in the Paralogisms of Pure Reason chapter of the Critique commentators typically only refer to an approach to, and an account of, the soul found principally in the thought of Descartes and Leibniz. But Dyck argues that to do so is to overlook the distinctive rational psychology developed by Christian Wolff, which emphasized the empirical foundation of any rational cognition of the soul, and which was widely influential among eighteenth-century German philosophers, including Kant. In this book, Dyck reveals how the received conception of the aim and results of Kant's Paralogisms must be revised in light of a proper understanding of the rational psychology that is the most proximate target of Kant's attack. In particular, he contends that Kant's criticism hinges upon exposing the illusory basis of the rational psychologist's claims inasmuch as he falls prey to the appearance of the soul as being given in inner experience. Moreover, Dyck demonstrates that significant light can be shed on Kant's discussion of the soul's substantiality, simplicity, personality, and existence by considering the Paralogisms in this historical context.Readership: Scholars and advanced students in history of philosophy, especially those working on Kant.