Maggs Bros.

An introductory summary of Kantian philosophy by the Catholic clergyman and philosopher Andreas Metz (1767-1839). “The greatest utility of the book lay in this, that it was written by a Roman Catholic, and was suited to the spreading of Kant’s philosophy throughout Catholic Germany, and to the dissipation of many prejudices which had there arisen against it” (Adickes, p. 270).

“Along with Sebastian Mutschelle, Gregor Leonhard Reiner, Maternus Reuss and other ‘Catholic early Kantians’, Andreas Metz (1767-1839) belonged to a group of Catholic philosophers and theologians who favourably appropriated and critically developed the philosophy of Immanuel Kant prior to the 1827 indexing of the Kritik der reinen Vernuft by the Catholic Curia in Rome. Metz was named Maternus Reuss’s successor so that the reception of Kantian philosophy could continue at the University of Würzburg. In Kurze und deutliche Darstellung des Kantischen Systems, Metz tries to explain the foundations of the Kantian system developed in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft. His purpose is primarily didactic, as the work is intended to help the reader understand Kant’s philosophy. At the same time, the work is designed to prevent misunderstandings of the potentially confusing innovations found in Kant’s writings. Thus, he reconstructs the theoretical aspects of Kant’s concept of experience and the ‘actual existence of mathematics, as a science’ as the foundation of Kant’s system” (Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century German Philosophers).

Adickes, German Kantian Bibliography, 1432.