Authors from all over the world unite in an effort to cultivate dialogue between Asian and Western philosophy. The papers forge a new, East-West comparative path on the whole range of issues in Kant studies. The concept of personhood, crucial for both traditions, serves as a springboard to address issues such as knowledge acquisition and education, ethics and self-identity, religious/political community building, and cross-cultural understanding. Edited by Stephen Palmquist, founder of the Hong Kong Philosophy Cafe and well known for both his Kant expertise and his devotion to fostering philosophical dialogue, the book presents selected and reworked papers from the first ever Kant Congress in Hong Kong, held in May 2009. Among others the contributors are Patricia Kitcher (New York City, USA), Gunther Wohlfahrt (Wuppertal, Germany), Cheng Chung-ying (Hawaii, USA), Sammy Xie Xia-ling (Shanghai, China), Lau Chong-fuk (Hong Kong), Anita Ho (Vancouver/Kelowna, Canada), Ellen Zhang (Hong Kong), Pong Wen-berng (Taipei, Taiwan), Simon Xie Shengjian (Melbourne, Australia), Makoto Suzuki (Aichi, Japan), Kiyoshi Himi (Mie, Japan), Park Chan-Goo (Seoul, South Korea), Chong Chaeh-yun (Seoul, South Korea), Mohammad Raayat Jahromi (Tehran, Iran), Mohsen Abhari Javadi (Qom, Iran), Soraj Hongladarom (Bangkok, Thailand), Ruchira Majumdar (Kolkata, India), A.T. Nuyen (Singapore), Stephen Palmquist (Hong Kong), Christian Wenzel (Taipei, Taiwan), Mario Wenning (Macau).

What is happening when someone has a mystical experience, such as "feeling at one with the universe" or "hearing God's voice?" Does philosophy provide tools for assessing such claims? Which claims can be dismissed as delusions and which ones convey genuine truths that might be universally meaningful? Valuable insights into such pressing questions can be found in the writings of Immanuel Kant, though few philosophical commentators have appreciated the implications beyond his famous "Copernican hypothesis." In Kant and Mysticism, Stephen R. Palmquist corrects this skewed view of Kant once and for all. Beginning with a detailed analysis of Kant's 1766 work Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, Palmquist demonstrates that in Dreams Kant first discovers and explains his plan to write a new, "critical" philosophy that will revolutionize metaphysics by laying bare the limits of human reason. Palmquist shows how the same metaphorical relationship-between reason's dreams (metaphysics) and sensibility's dreams (mysticism)-permeates Kant's mature writings. Clarifying how Kant's final (unfinished) book, Opus Postumum, completes this dual project, Palmquist explains how the "critical mysticism" entailed by Kant's position has profound implications for contemporary understandings of religious and mystical experience, both by religious individuals and by philosophers seeking to understand such experiences.

This title was first published in 2000. Applying the new perspectival method of interpreting Kant he expounded in earlier works, Palmquist examines a broad range of Kant's philosophical writings to present a fresh view of his thought on theology, religion, and religious experience.

What is happening when someone has a mystical experience, such as "feeling at one with the universe" or "hearing God's voice?" Does philosophy provide tools for assessing such claims? Which claims can be dismissed as delusions and which ones convey genuine truths that might be universally meaningful? Valuable insights into such pressing questions can be found in the writings of Immanuel Kant, though few philosophical commentators have appreciated the implications beyond his famous "Copernican hypothesis." In Kant and Mysticism, Stephen R. Palmquist corrects this skewed view of Kant once and for all. Beginning with a detailed analysis of Kant's 1766 work Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, Palmquist demonstrates that in Dreams Kant first discovers and explains his plan to write a new, "critical" philosophy that will revolutionize metaphysics by laying bare the limits of human reason. Palmquist shows how the same metaphorical relationship-between reason's dreams (metaphysics) and sensibility's dreams (mysticism)-permeates Kant's mature writings. After clarifying how Kant's final (unfinished) book, Opus Postumum, completes this dual project, Palmquist explains how the "critical mysticism" entailed by Kant's position has profound implications for contemporary understandings of religious and mystical experience, both by religious individuals and by philosophers seeking to understand such experiences.

Kant on Intuition: Western and Asian Perspectives on Transcendental Idealism consists of 20 chapters, many of which feature engagements between Kant and various Asian philosophers. Key themes include the nature of human intuition (not only as theoretical-pure, sensible, and possibly intellectual-but also as relevant to Kant's practical philosophy, aesthetics, the sublime, and even mysticism), the status of Kant's idealism/realism, and Kant's notion of an object. Roughly half of the chapters take a stance on the recent conceptualism/non-conceptualism debate. The chapters are organized into four parts, each with five chapters. Part I explores themes relating primarily to the early sections of Kant's first Critique: three chapters focus mainly on Kant's theory of the "forms of intuition" and/or "formal intuition", especially as illustrated by geometry, while two examine the broader role of intuition in transcendental idealism. Part II continues to examine themes from the Aesthetic but shifts the main focus to the Transcendental Analytic, where the key question challenging interpreters is to determine whether intuition (via sensibility) is ever capable of operating independently from conception (via understanding); each contributor offers a defense of either the conceptualist or the non-conceptualist readings of Kant's text. Part III includes three chapters that explore the relevance of intuition to Kant's theory of the sublime, followed by two that examine challenges that Asian philosophers have raised against Kant's theory of intuition, particularly as it relates to our experience of the supersensible. Finally, Part IV concludes the book with five chapters that explore a range of resonances between Kant and various Asian philosophers and philosophical ideas.

Werner S. Pluhar's masterful rendering of Kant's major work on religion is meticulously annotated and presented here with a selected bibliography, glossary, and generous index. Stephen R. Palmquist's engaging Introduction provides historical background, discusses Religion in the context of Kant's philosophical system, elucidates Kant's main arguments, and explores the implications and ongoing relevance of the work.

While earlier work has emphasized Kant s philosophy of religion as thinly disguised morality, this timely and original reappraisal of Kant s philosophy of religion incorporates recent scholarship. In this volume, Chris L. Firestone, Stephen R. Palmquist, and the other contributors make a strong case for more specific focus on religious topics in the Kantian corpus. Main themes include the relationship between Kant s philosophy of religion and his philosophy as a whole, the contemporary relevance of specific issues arising out of Kant s philosophical theology, and the relationship of Kant s philosophy to Christian theology. As a whole, this book capitalizes on contemporary movements in Kant studies by looking at Kant not as an anti-metaphysician, but as a genuine seeker of spirituality in the human experience."