Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics

Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics is a 1929 book about Immanuel Kant by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. It is often referred to by Heidegger as simply the Kantbuch (Kantbook). This book was published as volume 3 of the Gesamtausgabe. The book is dedicated to the memory of Max Scheler. Background During the 1920s Heidegger read Immanuel Kant extensively. The Kantian influence is pervasive throughout Heidegger's most celebrated and influential book, Being and Time (1927). The Kantbook can be seen as a supplement for the unfinished second part of Being and Time. Additionally, during the winter semester of 1927/28 Heidegger delivered a lecture course dealing explicitly with Kant's philosophy entitled Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (volume 25 of the Gesamtausgabe). However, the main source for the Kantbook was Heidegger's encounter with Ernst Cassirer in Davos, in 1929. It is here Heidegger begins to develop his unique interpretation of Kant which places unprecedented emphasis on the schematism of the categories. Heidegger began writing Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics immediately after Davos. Reception Cassirer, like most Kant scholars, rejected Heidegger's interpretation of Kant. According to Michael J. Inwood, Heidegger implicitly abandoned some of the views he expounded in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics in his subsequent work on Kant.