Kant and the Problem of Nothingness

The Latin American philosopher Ernesto Mayz Vallenilla published the first study of Kant’s concept of nothingness in 1965. This translation of Mayz Vallenilla’s ground-breaking work makes it available in English for the first time. Mayz Vallenilla’s interpretation has much in common with Heidegger’s own approach to Kant, as well as the neo-Kantian tradition in the early 20th century. He offers a detailed interpretation and critique of ‘nothing’ as it appears in the Amphiboly chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason and presents an analysis of Kant’s Table of Nothing which understands temporality as the horizon of all possible cognition. Accompanied by translator’s notes and a glossary, Addison Ellis’ translation includes extensive commentary and an introduction providing historical context and references to the original sources in German. He preserves key terminology and phrasing from the original text and allows an often-neglected connection to be made between the Kantian tradition in Latin America and the tradition in the Anglophone world.