The Equivocation of Reason

Phillips asks how the literary works of the German writer Heinrich von Kleist might be considered a critique and elaboration of Kantian philosophy. In 1801, the 23-year-old Kleist, attributing his loss of confidence in our knowledge of the world to his reading of Kant, turned from science to literature. He ignored Kant's apology of the sciences to focus on the philosopher's doctrine of the unknowability of things in themselves. From that point on, Kleist's writings relate confrontations with points of hermeneutic resistance.