Reddit mentions of Kant's Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense

Kant's Transcendental Idealism by Henry Allison is an excellent resource for understanding the Critique of Pure Reason.

For Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Kemp Smith and Guyer/Wood are both good options, but I would recommend the Pluhar translation.

If you want to try to read the Critique, you should first read Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. He wrote it to introduce the project of the Critique, and it does an excellent job at this. It's available in the Cambridge collection edition as part of Theoretical Philosophy After 1781 or on its own.

Secondary literature would also be a good idea. The best reference is Allison's Kant's Transcendental Idealism. Allison interprets Kant a very specific way on a number of contentious issues. For excellent references which adopt some alternate views, see Guyer's Kant and Kant and the Claims of Knowledge. All of these would be excellent secondary references and of great help in approaching the Critique. Guyer's Kant is probably the easiest read, so might be a good place to start.

For Descartes, you should get the first two volumes of the Cottingham edition called The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. The Discourse is an excellent place to start. With it you should also read The World and at least some of the Rules for the Direction of the Mind; perhaps the first six or so, or more if you find them interesting. These are all in the first volume. After these, you should read his Meditations, which are in volume two.

Yes. Trust me when I say that you'll need second literature if you are willing to understand one line of, for instance, the Critique of Pure Reason. There are good introductory books on Kant out there that can help you.

If you know almost nothing about his philosophy, I recommend Scruton's or Wood's books that approach his whole philosophy without any details, making it accessible. A good start. At the same time you could give the Prefaces A and B, and the Introduction of the first Critique a try.

For what I call "intermediary literature", there is Gardner's "GuideBook", and having "A Kant Dictionary" by your side would help a lot.

Some might recommend Allison's defense of Kant's Transcendental Idealism, I think it is great, started to read it some weeks ago, but as well as Strawson's The Bounds of Sense or Heidegger's Kant and the Problems of Metaphysics, it is way advanced.

The most important thing is that you (or any other who is reading this and is also interested in Kant) are motivated, that you don't quit when read at the first time and understand barely nothing. With effort and persistence it gets better.

p.s.: I do not intend to advertise for Amazon, you can read the synopses and reviews and buy somewhere else.

sigh

The classic contemporary defense of transcendental idealism, and exegesis of Kant's CPR, is Henry Allison's *Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense".

While I can understand reading Plato's and Aristotle's complete works, there's no point in doing the same for Cicero or Seneca. It's simply a waste of time. If you truly decided to go through with this plan, you'd be dead by the time you reached Plutarch.

If you're at all interested in modern philosophy, you need to get to Kant as quickly as possible. You don't need to have read the entire corpus of ancient and medieval philosophy to understand what's going on today. Also, primary texts alone won't cut it. Don't underestimate the complexity of these ancient texts simply because they're so old.

With that, here's what I would suggest:

1. The magnificent Leo Strauss recorded a bunch of lectures on different texts by Plato and Aristotle. Some of these recordings are incomplete but for Plato you can find the complete recordings of his lectures on The Republic, Gorgias, Protagoras, Laws, Thucydides and Meno. For Aristotle, you'll find his recordings on his Ethics, his Politics and his Rhetoric. Listen to them while you read these texts.
   
   
2. Put Seneca and Cicero aside for a while, they'll only slow you down right now. You can come back to them later.
   
   
3. You'll need some background to understand what Kant is doing. For that purpose, read Descartes mediations, Locke's Essay concerning human understanding and Hume's Enquiry concerning human understanding. The one philosopher missing in this list is Leibniz. It's not easy to point to one particular work of his, since he published mostly essays. Also, his thinking is much "wackier" and harder to get than the other one's here. With that in mind, get his collected essays and a secondary text on Leibniz. The routledge books are usually fine although I've heard very high praise for Bertrand Russel's A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz.
   
   
4. You'll now have the necessary background to get into Kant. I suggest you read at the very least his Critique of pure reason, Prolegemona, Grounding for the metaphysics of morals and critique of practical reason. All of these are tricky but absolutely crucial texts. WIthout them, nothing that comes after Kant will make much sense. For the CPR, get Gardner's Guidebook to the CPR. Also, here are two really great recorded courses on the CPR. The first is by J. Bernsetin and the second by Richard D. Winfield. Once you feel comfortable with Kant, go for the ultimate secondary text, Allison's Kant's Transcendental Idealism. For Kant's works on ethics, consider Allison's Commentary on Kant's Groundwork for the metaphysics of morals. Also, get Allen Wood's magnificent book Kantian Ethics.
   
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   You now have a solid foundation in the three fundamental thinkers of western philosophy. Now, all the doors are open. You could go further and either start reading Hegel and Adorno or alternatively you could just straight to Husserl and Heidegger. All these four thinkers require Kant as a basis but with Heidegger, the background reading in Aristotle will start to pay off. You could also go for Kierkegaard and Nietzsche if you're into existentialism.
   
   
   Alternatively, if you want to specialize in medieval thinking, refocus your studies on Aristotle, read Plotin and Augustine, get Edward Feser's books on Thomas Aquinas, learn Latin and get to work reading the Summa.
   
   One more thing: If you're really serious about reading basically the complete works of Plato, Aristotle and other greek thinkers, you'll need to learn Attic Greek. My favourite textbook is Mastronarde's, although if you want to go straight to reading texts, consider Reading Greek.