Abstract

This book is a revised dissertation defended at Cologne in 1997 under the direction of Klaus Düsing. It concentrates on the problem of idealism, that is on the question whether anything exists besides ourselves. It is a question as old as philosophy itself and for this reason the author takes the approach of the “history of the problems”. It is, however, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason which provides the axis around which this study rotates, because in it Kant succeeded in formulating one of the most original answers to the question raised above, namely that yes, something exists besides ourselves, but this does not mean that we have to commit ourselves to the position of philosophical realism, which considers the existence of the external world beyond any doubt. Kant was clear in distinguishing between a critical investigation into the issue of idealism and a dogmatic acceptance of what he calls “metaphysical idealism,” adding that it is twofold, including Descartes’s skeptical or problematical idealism, that doubts about the existence of the external world, and Berkeley’s dogmatic idealism, that flatly denies it. Kant was not tender with metaphysical idealism. Heidemann quotes a salient passage from Kant’s Metaphysikvorlesung of Winter 1792/93, “[i]dealism is a kind of cancer in metaphysics that to date has been considered incurable”.