Abstract

This paper extends Richard Velkely’s interpretation of the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant by examining it in the light of the concept of “scandal.” Kant himself saw the “scandal of ostensible contradiction of reason with itself” as what drove him to a critical examination of reason. My own research has shown that Rousseau’s system is rooted in scandal, so the task it to connect these two facts. First, the exact meaning and nature of scandal has to be determined through a close reading of Kant’s Remarks in the Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. Next, one must trace the connection between Kant’s reading of Rousseau and the problem that eventually becomes known as the antinomy of pure reason.