Abstract

Kant was not a very knowledgeable historian of philosophy. He came to the study of philosophy from natural science, and later the fields of ethics, aesthetics, politics and religion came to occupy his central concerns, but his approach to philosophical issues never came by way of reflection on their history. He was well acquainted, of course, with the recent tradition of German philosophy: Leibniz, Wolff, Baumgarten and Crusius, and he seems also to have had knowledge of eighteenth century French philosophy, and of as much of Anglophone philosophy as had been translated into either French or German. But like many modern philosophers, he had an inadequate appreciation of the scholastic tradition, and his knowledge of classical Greek philosophy was mostly at second hand.