My initial mode of consciousness ispure and unreflective. I am nothing but an outward directednesstowards the world. Others, however, do not just gaze at the worldalongside me, they gaze at me . By way of the other, then, Ibecome aware of myself as also being the type of thing that can begazed upon, and that I am responsible for how I look to the other.Accordingly, I can then feel shame or pride. You are right to ask,though, why this possibility of shame then is said to be essential. Well, first ofall, to feel pride would be accept the judgement of the other that Iam nothing but the thing upon which they gaze. Specifically, I wouldbe accepting that I am not free – a classic case of inauthenticity.Shame, on the other hand, includes the consciousness of freedom; thatis, the conscousness that I could and should have been somethingelse. Shame, in short, is authentic because it recognisesresponsibility while at the same time recognising freedom.

This is Abbott's translation of the preface and introduction to Kant's 'Metaphysical First Principles of the Doctrive of Virtue'. This was published in 1797, shortly after the 'Metaphysical First Principles of the Doctrine of Right'. These two short books of first principles are now normally published together as the 'Metaphysics of Morals'. So, the book you are asking about represents approximately one sixth of the whole publication of 1797. (BTW, where the date 1780, normally printed along with Abbott's translation comes from, I have no idea.)

This is technical term within Marxist thought. 'Falseconsciousness' is when an individual or especially a class is unableto properly recognise the economic and political situation. Indeed,the individual or class may even put forward a view concerning theirsituation and justify that view, BUT that view and its justificationare (unbeknownst to them) in fact determined by the underlyingconditions of production. In such a case, the individual appears tobe fully conscious both of their views and of their reasons forholding those views, when in fact they are quite 'unconsious' of thereal reasons. Specifically, the working classes are unable torecognise their exploited condition, or their own contribution to thecreation and maintenance of that condition, because of a falseconsciousness concerning it. 'False consciousness' is thus related tothe term 'ideology'. The term might be used more generally (i.e. without any referenceto Marxism) for analogous situations where our awareness orrationality are...

There is certainly something of Hume's reasoning in your question (see the end of section v of the first Enquiry ). And, this way of thinking about knowledge becomes a basic definition of knowledge in pragmatism (Pierce, James et al). However, it is inappropriate in Kant. We must take what you term the categorical difference between things-in-themselves and appearances seriously. Appearances are the only domain of knowledge. This is not because appearances are what we are directly acquainted with, while things-in-themselves are in some way hidden. If that were the case, as you say, there would be good reason to think that the former would have to be correlated with the latter, and that through this correlation, the latter could come to be known. Rather, we should say that the thing-in-itself is such as to not be a possible object of knowledge. In other words, whatever forms of knowledge would be necessary to know a thing-in-itself (even talking about a 'form of knowledge' here is probably already...

The word translated 'monster' in the edition you cite is 'Unmensch' -- thus, 'inhuman' is probably better, because it captures the very Nietzschean ambiguity between concepts of 'animal', 'monster' and 'overhuman'. Anyway, I've not done a really thorough study of late period Nietzsche so I'm not sure if there is a definitive answer to be found somewhere. But, rather than let your question go unanswered, I thought I would venture my suggestions. I suspect he either is referring to Cesare Borgia (see sections 46 and 61, and also Twilight section 37); or, less likely, to himself and/or his Zarathustra (cf Anti-Christ, section 54).

I'd go with the shorter. Moran is an important and highly-respected figure in the field and knows what he is doing in selecting material for the abridgement. Also, I think it would be a shame 'only' to read the Investigations, and not approach Ideas, Cartesian Meditations or the Crisis. Important as that early work is, most of Husserl's thought was in front of him still.

Allow me to add a brief note to Sean's answer. 'Sensibility' translates ' Sinnlichkeit ', which isroughly the ability to have intuitions; it is thus contrasted withthe understanding, which is the ability to have (and employ)concepts. 'Sensation', however, translates ' Empfindung ', andmeans roughly what it does in English: the stimulation of one'ssenses by the real presence of an object affecting them. The point ofsaying this is that the two concepts of sensibility and sensation arenot etymologically related in German as they are in English. Thestandard English translations are thus misleading and disguisethe fact that Kant is speaking of two very different things. Forexample, sensibility includes the ability to imagine – that is toform intuitions of things that are not actually there – and stillmore importantly, to have 'pure' intuitions of mathematical objects(e.g. a circle) – which of course could never be there as physicalobjects affecting me. It is precisely because of the...

Please have a look at responses to similar questions: click on'philosophers' on the list of categories, and then search for 'Kant'. I'd like to comment here on the quotation that you cite, becauseit seems to me (at least when taken out of context) to be amisleading representation of what Kant actually argues. First of all,let of think about the notion of a 'common origin' in 'the humancondition': this makes it sound as though Kant is concerned with thepsychological origin of concepts and of facts, as if his work couldbe without remainder reduced to, say, evolutionary biology,linguistic relativism or cognitive science. All three of these areperfectly interesting fields of enquiry, but they miss the notion ofthe transcendental in Kant. Second of all, the notion of a 'aspects of the world assigned toit by ourselves' seems to entail that there are other aspects of theworld that are not assigned by us. The problem comes from thinkingthat there is a set of 'superficial' aspects S...

Hi -- I guess you are referring to an answer I wrote about Nietzsche and the notion of 'eternal recurrence'. I wish I could help you directly, but Deleuze is not one of my areas of specialisation. However, I've always found 'Nietzsche and Philosophy', an early book of his, to be quite readable -- that's bound to be the best place to start.

Let me add a short note to Andrew's fine answer. Imagine thefollowing reasoning: The mind 'imposes' space and time upon the empirical world. Theconcepts 'at the moment of' and 'before' have meaning only because ofthat imposing. Therefore, it makes no sense to ask what empiricalreality was before or at the moment of the mind's act. It makes nosense not because we cannot get back to that prior reality, butrather the question itself is meaningless. Now, I agree with Andrew's assessment that Kant did not in factagree with the first statement above. Nevertheless, the conclusion tothe above bit of reasoning is still salient. Kant was interested indiscovering the transcendental conditions of any experience of ashared empirical reality. He was not interested in the empirical orpsychological 'mechanics' of the human mind such that it arrives asperceptions (as were, arguably at least, his great predecessorsHobbes, Locke and Hume).