ABSTRACT

Immanuel Kant is certainly not a philosopher who immediately comes to mind when one attempts to construct a list of the outstanding historical figures who have made significant contributions to those areas of philosophical investigation currently falling under the general heading 'Informal Logic'. The caricature of Kant is ofa man obsessed with formality in all of its guises (in both his professional writings and in his private life), of a thinker who slavishly pursued his architectonic at the expense of truth (and even of plausibility), and of a philosopher who believed that the final word about logic had been said by Aristotle, after whom 'logic had not been able to advance even a single step'. As with most caricatures, this one contains some element of truth, but when we look more closely at Kant's writings, here, as elsewhere, he provides us with important insights in a number of areas, many of which are relevant to the study of informal logic.