Vorlesungen über Anthropologie. Vol. XXV (Division 4, Vorlesungen, vol. 2) of Kants gesammelte Schriften (review)

This massive double tome is the long-awaited beginning of a whole new era in Kant research, and it represents much more than just another volume in the Academy edition. It is the first work in the edition to be brought out from the new Marburg Kant Archive (an edition of the parallel lectures on Physical Geography, vol. XXVI, is to be completed within a few years), and it reflects an entirely different level of scholarship than that found in earlier volumes, especially the lecture volumes edited by the late Gerhard Lehmann.

The famous historical tradition of German editing, and the special respect and difficulty that tends to surround work on Kant, have probably left most English-speaking scholars with the comfortable but naive presumption that the Academy edition for Kant is a paradigm of its kind. The sad and little-known fact is that this presumption is far from the truth, notwithstanding many path-breaking editorial achievements years ago, especially by Erich Adickes. As the new editors note (cxxi), even most of the main texts of Kant’s Critical era lack the full apparatus of references that one would expect in a critical edition today. An up-to-date publication that guides readers to the main shortcomings of the previous volumes is sorely needed, and fortunately it is now in preparation. In the future, the volumes containing the opus postumumand the other lectures may need to be redone in their entirety, although it is unclear whether adequate personnel and support can be found for completing such a project within the lifetime of this journal’s readers. Germany still faces many rebuilding tasks, and the edition of the sage of Königsberg does not seem to have the priority that pure practical reason and the rest of the world might expect.

There are notorious special difficulties for the volumes of notes concerning Kant’s lectures. Work on this last section of the Academy edition (section IV; the three other sections are Kant’s publications, letters, and manuscripts) was suspended in 1920, and when it was resumed after the war under the directorship of Lehmann in Berlin, the daunting task clearly exceeded his meager resources, with matters becoming only more difficult after the Berlin crisis of 1961. Fascinating new sets of lecture notes on logic, metaphysics, and ethics were found and brought out through the 1970s and 1980s, but they were published on the basis of editorial methods that left much to be desired. The chaotic apparatus that Lehmann provided was presented in a form that was often unhelpful or misleading.

In contrast, volume XXV will be like a new continent for readers. Here one finds an enormous mass of new material accompanied by a clear and thorough introduction, with a meticulous account of all sources and a concise review of the relevant philosophical as well as historical issues. These issues are quite complicated because of the extensive background of Kant’s anthropological discussions, and the problem of using what are only reworked copies of notes made by groups of students long ago. The editors provide a very helpful account of the tradition of note-taking for Kant’s lectures in general, as well as extremely well-researched remarks covering the dating and authenticity of all the sets of the Anthropologynotes. Another nice feature is that, unlike previous Academy volumes, emendations and relevant references are provided in the text itself, with two levels of footnotes, including indications of hundreds of parallel passages, so there is no longer any end material that one has constantly to chase after (although there is a 126-page bibliography and index section). The printing style is modern and very readable. The editors have chosen to print underlining wherever it appears in the manuscripts, to mark no...