The Toronto Philosophy Meetup

Sun, Dec 28 · 1:00 PM EST

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Kant's Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion by Michelle Grier

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Welcome everyone to the next meetup series hosted by Jen and Philip! (Please scroll to the bottom for the reading schedule and materials! 👇👇👇)

We are lucky at the Toronto Philosophy Meetup to have a lot of excellent meetups on Immanuel Kant. In this blurb I (Philip) will try to give you a sense of what our Kant meetup is (and what it isn't) so you can make an informed decision about which Kant meetup is right for you. Honestly, you cannot go wrong. Erik and Gerry both do excellent Kant meetups and several other people do as well.

But that being said, this meetup Jen and I will be doing will also have its merits and this blurb will, I hope, help you understand what those merits are.

First, the basics:

This will be a 3 hour meetup. For the first 2 hours we will be talking about:

1. Michelle Grier's wonderful book Kant's Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion. (see link for description)
2. For the 3rd and final hour we will be talking about Manfred Kuehn's book Kant: A Biography.

In both portions of the meetup, the format will be our usual "accelerated live read". What this means is that each participant will be expected to read roughly 15 pages from Grier and roughly 20 pages from Keuhn before each session. Each participant will have the option of picking a few paragraphs they especially want to focus on. We will then do a live read on the paragraphs that the participants found most interesting when they did the assigned reading.

People who have not done the reading are welcome to attend this meetup. However if you want to TALK during the meetup it is essential that you do the reading. We mean it! It is essential that the direction of the conversation be influenced only by people who have actually done the reading. This is KANT after all — arguably the most important western philosopher of all time! So do yourself a favour and do the reading. You will get so much more out of this meetup if you do. You may think you are so brilliant and wonderful that you can come up with great points even if you do not do the reading. I'm sure you are brilliant and wonderful — no argument there. But you still have to do the reading if you want to talk in this meetup. REALLY.

Please note that this is a "raise hands" meetup and has a highly structured format, not an anarchy-based one. This is partly for philosophical reasons: We want to discourage a simple-minded rapid fire "gotcha!" approach to philosophy. But our highly structured format is also for disability related reasons that Philip can explain if required.

After we have spent a few sessions reading and talking about the Michelle Grier book, we may feel the need to focus on a few select passages from Kant himself. When we do this we will be using the Guyer and Wood translation of the Critique of Pure Reason. We also may feel the need to situate Grier's claims within a broader interpretive context and, if we do, we may spend some time dipping into Graham Bird's magisterial book The Revolutionary Kant. If you are new to Kant I urge you to start at the beginning of the Guyer/Wood translation of the Critique of Pure Reason and read it (slowly!) all the way through; either on your own or with a group. If you do this, the Graham Bird book can function as a helpful guide. I know the Critique of Pure Reason is not an easy book, but even if you just do 2 pages per day it will help you enormously (in all of your studies in Philosophy).

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Here is a bit about the guiding ethos of this meetup:

This meetup will be guided by the idea that to study Kant seriously it is essential to have a sense of the bewilderingly wide range of ways there are of interpreting Kant. The different ways of interpreting Kant do not present slightly different versions of the same basic Kantian themes. Not at all! The different interpretations are so different that it is sometimes hard to believe that everyone is reading the same German guy named Kant! And there is no indication that the various interpretations are converging. Again, not at all.

This frustrating situation is just the way things are in Kant Studies and we have to be realistic about it.

I (Philip) will always do my best to contrast Michell's Grier's claims with the different (sometimes wildly different) claims made by other Kant scholars. When we read passages from the Critique of Pure Reason I will do my best to alert you to the bewilderingly wide range of ways there are of interpreting every line Kant writes. This is what serious Kant scholars do (and serious people who are new to Kant do) and it is what we will do too.

This interpretive technique (of comparing your way of interpreting Kant with all the other ways of interpreting Kant) is, if anything, even MORE important if you are new to Kant. There is an alarming tendency in the history of Kant scholarship for people to (as it were) get "locked in" to whatever interpretation of Kant they encounter first, or whichever way of interpreting Kant has the most grip on their particular intellectual community.

It would be nice if we could just start reading Kant, one sentence at a time and formulate an interpretation of Kant as we went. Even though that way of reading works really well for some philosophers, centuries of hard-won experience has taught Kant scholars that it does not work at all well in the case of Kant. Or such, at least, is the guiding ethos of this meetup. New readers tend to see in the text whatever interpretation of Kant is prevalent in their particular intellectual community. In this meetup we will make sure that does not happen by constantly referring to the full range of ways there are of interpreting Kant.

Instead of reading Kant just one sentence at a time, the community of serious Kant scholars has learned (often they had to learn the hard way) that Kant must be read holistically. Each sentence must be read in the context of Kant's overall project, and in the context of all the myriad ways there are of interpreting Kant and (indeed) even of all the myriad ways there are of interpreting what exactly his overall project even is.

Don't worry, it is not as difficult as it sounds! And it is more profound, more illuminating and ultimately much more satisfying than supposedly "easier" ways of engaging with Kant — even for (especially for!) beginners.

I will do my best to be your guide to reading Kant holistically. And don't worry, we'll make it fun too. Whether you are new to Kant or have been reading him for decades, this meetup is for you!

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READING SCHEDULE

(A pdf of Grier's Kant's Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion is available here. A pdf of Keuhn's Kant: A Biography is available here.)
– Update: A pdf of Henry Allison's essay "Kant's Transcendental Idealism here.

For 12/28/2025

• NO reading from Michelle Grier; instead
• Henry E. Allison's Kant’s Transcendental Idealism in A Companion to Kant edited by Graham Bird (a PDF of the essay will be attached here or in the comments below)
• In Manfred Keuhn: pages 100-112

For 12/14/2025

• In Michelle Grier: pages 80-90
• In Manfred Keuhn: pages 86-99

For 11/30/2025

• In Michelle Grier: pages 69-80
• In Manfred Keuhn: pages 75-86

For 11/16/2025

• In Michelle Grier: pages 57-66
• In Manfred Keuhn: pages 61-75

For 11/2/2025 [as 10/19/2025 cancelled]:

• In Michelle Grier: pages 48-57
• In Manfred Keuhn: the first half of Chapter 1, pages 42-60

For the 10/5/2025 meeting:

• In Michelle Grier: pages 32-47
• In Manfred Keuhn: the first half of Chapter 1, pages 24-42

For the second meeting (Sept 21):

• In Michelle Grier: pages 17-32
• In Manfred Keuhn: the first half of Chapter 1, pages 24-42

For the first meeting (September 7):

• In Michelle Grier: read the Introduction, 1-13
• In Manfred Keuhn: read the Prologue, pages 1-23

After that we will post the readings as we go (once we get a better sense of what pace works best for our group and the particular people in it). And don't forget that sometimes we will take a break from Grier and instead read from the Guyer/Wood translation of the Critique of Pure Reason.

Jen and Philip have a very clear division of labour. If you have issues or concerns about the choice of texts, or the pace of the reading (or other "content" concerns) please contact Philip. If you have technology related questions please contact Jen. If you have complaints please direct them only to Philip.