Strawson P.F.: From Hume to Kant and Back Again

P.F. Strawson is one of the most famous Kantian philosophers and interpretators of Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason”. This study is dedicated to reconstruction of this interpretation. It is also dedicated to the analysis of the story and place of Strawson’s interpretation in the history of his own philosophical career. I show how Strawson reads Kant’s text, what strategies of interpretation he adopts and what problems he faces. In “Individuals” and “The Bounds of Sense” Strawson explicitly associates himself with Kant and considers himself as Kantian philosopher. Kantian philosophy for Strawson is the descriptive, anti-sceptical metaphysics that seeks to explicate our basic conceptual sсheme. However, due to various criticism, Strawson had to abandon descriptive metaphysics and to change his intellectual figures. On of the main heroes of “Skepticism and Naturalism” - his late book - becomes Hume. The second part of the paper is dedicated to the explanation of the transition from Kant to Hume. In this work, Strawson argues for some kind of soft Hume-like naturalism instead of previously held descriptive metaphysics. This kind of naturalism is more modest than metaphysics. It does not pretend to be the main and the most fundamental of all the philosophical studies. It is simply an analysis of one of the possible philosophical perspective. The stand point of ordinary believes.