CAIRD (Edward).
The Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant
‘In the company of T. H. Green and F. H. Bradley, Caird led the revival of an idealist philosophy which became the most striking and powerful intellectual force in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain. His most significant contribution to this philosophical movement lay in his two works on Kant’, the ‘primary purpose’ of which ‘was to demonstrate that, notwithstanding Kant’s reputation for promoting dualism, the Kantian system was premised on a deep organic unity. Caird interpreted Kant freely, for he was convinced that Kant did not fully understand how consistently organic his own philosophical system actually was. Some critics regretted this radical reconstruction of Kant. But none the less, the volumes were widely regarded as authoritative, ‘in many ways the culmination of the long English endeavour to assimilate Kant’ (Pringle-Pattison, 278)’ (ODNB).
