There is a major division in the interpretation of Kant, between traditionalists and revolutionaries. Traditionalists see Kant’s work as enmeshed in the prevailing issues of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They tend to assimilate Kant to his predecessors such as Leibniz, Hume, or Berkeley. Revolutionaries take more seriously Kant’s vehement repudiation of all the earlier empiricist, rationalist, realist, idealist, skeptical, and dogmatic doctrines.

At one time the traditionalist view was dominant, but revolutionary interpretations have found more favor recently. The Revolutionary Kant systematically develops the revolutionary account. At the heart of these disputes is the character of Kant’s idealism. Kant’s doctrine has been influentially described, in a phrase he never used, as ‘the mind making Nature’. Such a slogan makes it easy to assimilate Kant to an extreme idealism, but even if that misunderstanding is avoided, the problem remains of reconciling Kant’s system with his uncompromising realism.

Kant himself was aware of these ambiguities and sought to resolve them, but philosophers have often ignored his clarification or judged it unavailing. The Revolutionary Kant scrutinizes and outlines the whole text of the Critique, to show that Kant has adequate defensive resources, even though they require a transformation in our understanding of his great work.

"Required reading for all serious students of Kant! The Revolutionary Kant is the first full-scale commentary on the Critique of Pure Reason to appear in English since the books of Kemp-Smith and Paton early in the last century. It is also the first work to oppose at every point the ‘traditionalist’ picture of Kant as an idealist philosopher operating within the modern epistemological problematic associated with Descartes and Berkeley."

—Michael Friedman, author of A Parting of the Ways

"Lucid and accessible, Graham Bird’s new book is informed equally by a close reading of the text, a thorough knowledge of the secondary literature, and a genuine appreciation of contemporary philosophical discussion. From this point on, everyone interested in Kant, student and teacher alike, will want to keep The Revolutionary Kant near at hand."

—Gordon G. Brittan, author of Kant’s Theory of Science

"An ambitious book that delivers on its promise. Bird’s The Revolutionary Kant achieves a rare combination of breadth, depth, and sustained critical punch. A must read for all those who do battle with the Critique.

—Paul Abela, author of Kant’s Empirical Realism

Graham Bird is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Manchester and Honorary Professor of the University of Wales. He founded the U.K. Kant Society and is co-founder and co-editor of the journal Kantian Review. He wrote Kant’s Theory of Knowledge (1962), William James (1986), and Philosophical Tasks (1972).

自Kemp Smith的康德哲學解義之後，英語學界對純批全麵疏解的普通讀本幾乎闕如，而這本比純批還厚的Commentary似乎可以彌補這個缺陷。Smith的解讀已成為經典，最近重印瞭一次，S. Gardner——今年暑期學院的教師，UCL的教授——為之寫瞭新的導言。當然，Gardner寫的純批導讀也非常齣色，篇幅不大，但要害處決不放過（Gardner, Sebastian. 1999. Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason, Routledge Philosophy Guidebooks. London: Routledge.）

“鳥先生”這本書很適閤學生使用，他的基本思路是采取革命性的解讀方針，而與傳統解讀策略（即顯象與物自身的二元論）針鋒相對。在導言中，他概述瞭七個特點，其核心是把康德的革命錶述為：拒斥規範性、辯護性的認識論，贊成對經驗的描述的形而上學（斯特勞森的術語）。

我沒有仔細看內容，但淺顯易懂是其特點，對一下概念、問題的疏解也比較細緻。

鳥先生是曼徹斯特大學榮休教授，英國康德學會和《康德評論》的創始人