Socrates Meets Kant

Okay, just finished reading Professor Peter Kreeft’s book Socrates Meets Kant, a 326-page dialogue in which Kant’s metaphysics and ethics are put to the Socratic torch in some purgatorial afterlife.

It’s too complex for me to review it. I lack the tools (though I have the desire). Or, perhaps, I’ve been pop-culturally-dumbed down over the years, if in fact I ever had the ability to critique a work such as this. (For the record, and I think my record supports this, I think I do. Or did. These shifting verb tenses are confusing me …)

Anyhoo – I grade it with an A. Any – every – student of philosophy should read Mr. Kreeft’s books, especially those of the Socrates Meets So-and-so series.

The book spends roughly a third of its space putting Kant’s metaphysics (his theories about being and existence) through the mental meat grinder, with the remainder focusing on the Prussian’s ethics (foundation of morality). Of these two broad, college-course-apiece-in-themselves subjects, I understood and followed the arguments of about

50% of the metaphysics section
10% of the ethics section

And that’s being quite self-generous.

The book definitely merits a re-read, a slow, thoughtful, analytical re-read. This is a book that can be read in a week (which I did) but almost demands to be re-read over the course of two or three months. Unfortunately, I lack the time, energy, and discipline to do such a second reading, though under different circumstances I would do so in a heartbeat.

Now – onto some science fiction – or some early 20th century horror …