There are not wanting indications that public interest in the Critical
Philosophy has been quickened of recent days in these countries, as
well as in America. To lighten the toil of penetrating through the
wilderness of Kant’s long sentences, the English student has now many
aids, which those who began their studies fifteen or twenty years
ago did not enjoy. Translations, paraphrases, criticisms, have been
published in considerable numbers; so that if it is not yet true that
“he who runs may read,” it may at least be said that a patient student
of ordinary industry and intelligence has his way made plain before
him. And yet the very number of aids is dangerous. Whatever may be the
value of short and easy handbooks in other departments of science,
it is certain that no man will become a philosopher, no man will
even acquire a satisfactory knowledge of the history of philosophy,
without personal and prolonged study of the _ipsissima verba_ of the
great masters of human thought. “Above all,” said Schopenhauer, “my
truth-seeking young friends, beware of letting our professors tell
you what is contained in the Critique of the Pure Reason”; and the
advice has not become less wholesome with the lapse of years. The fact,
however, that many persons have not sufficient familiarity with German
to enable them to study German Philosophy in the original with ease,
makes translations an educational necessity; and this translation of
Kant’s Critique of the faculty of Judgement has been undertaken in the
hope that it may promote a more general study of that masterpiece. If
any reader wishes to follow Schopenhauer’s advice, he has only to omit
the whole of this prefatory matter and proceed at once to the Author’s
laborious Introduction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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