Immanuel Kant, Enciclopedia filosofica

[Autom. eng. transl.] What is the philosopher's job? This question is answered by the Philosophical Encyclopedia, an introductory course to the study of philosophy that Kant held several times from 1767 to 1782. He explains to his listeners how philosophy cannot be learned from a professor or learned from books, but must constitute a model for the explanation of the reality in which man acts; it also encourages them to think for themselves, in the spirit of Aufklärung. Kant proposes the idea of the philosopher as a guide and legislator of reason, who knows how to guide man towards understanding the crucial questions of knowledge. The Philosophical Encyclopedia dates back to the decade of preparation of the Critique of Pure Reason, of which it shows some features that are still evolving, such as the table of judgments and categories; on the other hand, the function and role of critical philosophy as preparatory to any system of metaphysics appear already outlined. The edition is edited by Giuseppe Landolfi Petrone, an attentive scholar of Kant, and Laura Balbiani, a Germanist and historian of the language. In the introductory essay and in the two appendices, Landolfi Petrone traces Kant's academic career and illustrates the main themes of these lessons. In translating the long, unadorned and sometimes obscure fragment, Laura Balbiani remained faithful to the original, but managed to make the text flowable. The translator is also an effective introduction to reading, which highlights Kant's exhibition and teaching strategies. The original text opposite is taken from the XXIX volume of the Gesammelte Schriften edited by the Berlin Academy of Sciences.