B- Introductory Comments

The following essays comprise a series of Critical ‘Songs’ on texts of Immanuel Kant and others where the writing intersects with Kant’s. They are critical in the traditional sense of beginning from scholarly investigation. They are also songs in the sense that they vary from the traditional form of expository essay and venture into modes of poetic description, exhortation, and imperative.

I hope that they add both to the Critical understanding of the Kantian tradition of scholarship, as well as to an appreciation of the majesty and mystery of existence that coarse through his writing.

The ‘song’ mode will undoubtedly be confounding for many- skipping in the midst of a section to other areas where the strain of thinking follows. There are passages where the author- in attempting to make clear an area of text- will cause the reader to think that what is before them further obscures the issue by taking the issue farther out on the edge of clarity, and varying from Kant. But if the reader returns to the original text and then back to mine again, he/she will find that what Kant writes becomes more clear after reading this book. Kant might probably have called this book a ‘mere Rhapsody’.1 This is not a book for the Kant beginner, nor for the casual student.

Much has been written, of course, since the time of his death, beautiful- intricate- illuminating original philosophy and also secondary scholarship. I do not pretend to eclipse any of what these authors have written, but wish to join them- both in argument and in the tradition of writing- in order to contribute on page to the understanding of this life we share.

Richard J. Luczak II
Chicago, 1997