Read The Classics: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics & Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals November 9, 2008

The Multnomah County Library invites you to take part in a new book series, where you can read some of the best all-time classics and discuss them under the leadership of Paul Hovda, Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Reed College. Participation is free, but registration is required. You can register online at http://www.multcolib.org/events/classics/philosophy.html
A limited number of books will be available free of charge for those who pre-register.

The Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783) are a kind of condensed version of Kant's immense Critique of Pure Reason (1781). Kant tells us that it was his reading Hume that awakened him from "dogmatic slumber" and led him to a novel approach to philosophical questions, yielding novel answers. Kant's leading idea (called "transcendental idealism) is roughly that the objects that we experience are subject to conditions imposed upon them by the mind. Because the world is, as it were, (partially) constructed by the mind, it is subject to universal rules that the mind can know. The effect is simultaneously to justify and to limit the applicability of our concepts.

Somewhat independently, Kant is widely regarded as having given the most influential account of morality in the Western tradition. The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) lays out the fundamentals of Kant's account, on which reason plays the central role (rather than, as on Hume's account, non–rational emotion and feeling, or, as on the dominant accounts of his day, God).

Official Website: http://www.multcolib.org/events/classics/philosophy.html