Progressive citations: identifying contiguities in the overall work
What makes Kant´s way of arguing special across his overall work is the fact that individual theorems are not only dealt with on the pages of one book but that, over a much bigger distance, they are treated in the context of several texts, that they are repeatedly led toward clarification, and that in each case they are conclusively dealt with only at the end of such a long line. Usually the conclusion, and sometimes also: the preliminary explanations, include more precise definitions or classifications of concepts.
The topical lines go through the entire work, in different length; however by way of their central concepts they are easily identified. It may also be that they are unexpectedly discussed in texts which, at first sight, one would not at all attribute to the respective field of topics. In my opinion, it is thus much too short-sighted if certain works by Kant, just because of their titles or due to the philosophical topics they preliminarily deal with, are attributed to just one field (e. g. `epistemology´ or `anthropology´ or `natural sciences´) and if thus these over-hastily eliminated texts are not at all taken into consideration anymore in the context of investigating philosophical topical fields of different kinds.
It is more adequate and more helpful to, by way of looking for crucial concepts, identify the entire topical line and, in a way, pursue it step by step.
Doing so, one will find that in each respective work Kant´s considerations must be received and interpreted according to the each respective context, and this context is sometimes highly complex and must at first be sufficiently understood itself.
I have selected some such topical lines as examples, and I have chronologically quoted passages which, taken together, make such lines of thought. I have called this `progressive citation´, and time and again I have given hints at how I would read certain passages or at how I would classify them concerning their rhetorical status.
These selected topics are:
- Sceptical philosophizing
- The thing as such
- Change and causality
- War
- The equality of man and woman