Abstract

This interesting book has a double project: One is to show that Kant’s third Critique, the Critique of Judgment, contains the solution to a deep difficulty apparently posed by the previous Critiques: how can the self-sufficient, autonomous Kantian subject have any relation to an Other, that is, transcend itself? The second project is to show that several twentieth-century philosophers and psychoanalysts, Freud as well as more recent continental and American writers, fall within the “explanatory range” of the third Critique, that Kant is their precursor. This second project, set out in the introduction, suffers a little from the brevity of the exposition, since a reader not familiar with the psychoanalytic literature must rely on summary references to “work of mourning,” “mimetic identification,” “mouthwork,” and such to follow what is probably an excellent way to display the pervasive importance of Kantian thought.