How to Constitute a World ─ Outside In, Inside Out

In fifty years of teaching the Great Books at St. John’s College, Eva Brann has come to know intimately the world’s philosophers, from ancient Greek to modern.

How to Constitute a World gathers five essays on the work of Immanuel Kant in which Brann examines his Critique of Pure Reason, his Imperative, his Opus Postumum, his philosophical use of mathematics, and the place and meaning of “body” in Kant’s system.

Brann’s approach contemplates first allowing Kant to present himself pursuant to his own metaphors and terminology. She doesn’t explain Kant. Rather, Brann provides the conditions that allow for Kant’s arguments to offer themselves to the reader—but always under her expert guidance and scrutiny. Thus, we are accorded an opportunity to question, ponder, and ultimately accept Kant’s premises.

Brann’s Socratic approach, her strategic questioning, infuses her writing on Kant with unique insights and joy for the reader that both broadens and deepens Kant’s own presentation of himself. Brann embraces Kant so that the reader may appropriately learn how to question him.

Brann’s inferences, conclusions, and musings allow the reader, in the end, to understand and appreciate Kant to an extraordinary degree.

Also included are two other essays. In one, Brann questions (and rejects) the designation of the early philosophers as “Pre-Socratics.” In the other, Brann contrasts the concept of “depth” with that of “complexity.”