Abstract

The first half of this book consists of Michael Friedman’s Kant Lectures in essentially the form in which they were delivered at Stanford University in 1999. In the second half, “Fruits of Discussion,” Friedman elaborates, refines, and defends the central ideas of these lectures. Taken together, these halves form an eminently readable, slim, yet rich and ambitious volume. It proves our fullest account to date not only of Friedman’s neo-Kantian, historicized, dynamical conception of relativized a priori principles of mathematics and physics, but also of the pivotal role that Friedman sees philosophy as playing in making scientific revolutions rational.