Critique of Pure Reason

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Critique of Pure Reason

Title page of the 1781 edition.

Author

Immanuel Kant

Original title

Critika der reinen Vernunft

Translator

see below

Country

Germany

Language

German

Subject

Philosophy

Published

1781

856 (first German edition)[1]

Pages

Kritik in modern German.

Part of a series on

Immanuel Kant

Major works

Critiques of: Pure Reason; Judgment;Practical Reason

Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics

"What is Enlightenment?"

Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals

Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason

The Metaphysics of Morals

Kantianism
Kantian ethics

Transcendental idealism

Critical philosophy

Sapere aude

Schema

A priori and a posteriori

Analyticsynthetic distinction

Noumenon
Categories

Categorical imperative

Hypothetical imperative

"Kingdom of Ends"
Political philosophy

People

George Berkeley
Ren Descartes

J. G. Fichte
F. H. Jacobi
G. W. F. Hegel
David Hume

Arthur Schopenhauer

Baruch Spinoza

African Spir
Johannes Tetens

Related topics

Schopenhauer's criticism

German idealism
Neo-Kantianism

The Critique of Pure Reason (German: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, KrV) by Immanuel Kant,
first published in 1781, second edition 1787, is one of the most influential works in the history
of philosophy. Also referred to as Kant's "first critique," it was followed in 1788 by
the Critique of Practical Reason and in 1790 by the Critique of Judgment. In the preface to
the first edition Kant explains what he means by a critique of pure reason: "I do not mean by
this a critique of books and systems, but of the faculty of reason in general, in respect of all
knowledge after which it may strive independently of all experience."
[2]

Before Kant, it was generally held that truths of reason must be analytic, meaning that what
is stated in the predicate must already be present in the subject (for example, "An intelligent
man is intelligent" or "An intelligent man is a man"). In either case, the judgment is analytic
because it is arrived at by analyzing the subject. It was thought that all truths of reason, or
necessary truths, are of this kind: that in all of them there is a predicate that is only part of
the subject of which it is asserted. If this were so, attempting to deny anything that could be
known a priori (for example, "An intelligent man is not intelligent" or "An intelligent man is not
a man") would involve a contradiction. It was therefore thought that the law of contradiction is
sufficient to establish all a priori knowledge.
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Contents
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1 Kant's rejection of Hume's empiricism

2 Synthetic a priori judgments
3 Kant's approach
4 Contents

5 Table of Contents
6 I. Transcendental Doctrine of Elements
o 6.1 Transcendental Aesthetic
6.1.1 Space and time
o 6.2 Transcendental Logic
6.2.1 First Division: Transcendental Analytic
6.2.1.1 The Metaphysical Deduction
6.2.1.2 The Transcendental Deduction
6.2.1.3 The Schematism
6.2.1.4 The Refutation of Idealism
6.2.1.5 Appendix: Amphiboly of Concepts of Reflection
6.2.2 Second Division: Transcendental Dialectic
6.2.2.1 The Paralogisms of Pure Reason
6.2.2.1.1 The Soul is substance
6.2.2.1.2 The Soul is simple
6.2.2.1.3 The Soul is a person
6.2.2.1.4 The Soul is separated from the experienced world
6.2.2.2 The Antinomy of Pure Reason
o 6.3 Pure Reason
6.3.1 Refutation of the Ontological Proof of God's Existence
6.3.2 Refutation of the Cosmological ("Prime Mover") Proof of God's Existence
6.3.3 Physico-theological ("Watch Maker") Proof of God's Existence
7 II. Transcendental Doctrine of Method
o 7.1 The Discipline of Pure Reason
o 7.2 The Canon of Pure Reason
o 7.3 The Architectonic of Pure Reason
o 7.4 The History of Pure Reason
8 Terms and phrases
o 8.1 Intuition and concept
9 Tables of Principles and Categories of Understanding in the Critique
10 English translations
11 See also
12 Notes
13 References
14 Further reading
15 External links

Kant's rejection of Hume's empiricism[edit]

Before Kant (17241804), David Hume (17111776) accepted the general view
of rationalism about a priori knowledge. However, upon closer examination of the subject,
Hume discovered that some judgments thought to be analytic, especially those related
to cause and effect, were actually synthetic (i.e., no analysis of the subject will reveal the
predicate). They thus depend exclusively upon experience and are therefore a posteriori.
Before Hume, rationalists had held that effect could be deduced from cause; Hume argued
that it could not and from this inferred that nothing at all could be known a priori in relation to
cause and effect. Kant, who was brought up under the auspices of rationalism, was deeply
disturbed by Hume's skepticism. "Kant tells us that David Hume awakened him from his
dogmatic slumbers." Kant decided to find an answer and spent at least twelve years
thinking about the subject. Although the Critique of Pure Reason was set down in written
form in just four to five months, while Kant was also lecturing and teaching, the work is a
summation of the development of Kant's philosophy throughout that twelve-year period.
[6]

[7]

[8]

Kant's work was stimulated by his decision to take seriously Hume's skeptical conclusions
about such basic principles as cause and effect, which had implications for Kant's grounding
in rationalism. In Kant's view, Hume's skepticism rested on the premise that all ideas are
presentations of sensory experience. The problem that Hume identified was that basic
principles such as causality cannot be derived from sense experience only: experience
shows only that one event regularly succeeds another, not that it is caused by it. In section
VI (The General Problem of Pure Reason) of the introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason,
Kant explains that Hume stopped short of considering that a synthetic judgment could be
made 'a priori'. Kant's goal was to find some way to derive cause and effect without relying
on empirical knowledge. Kant rejects analytical methods for this, arguing that analytic
reasoning cannot tell us anything that is not already self-evident (Bxvii). Instead, Kant argued
that it would be necessary to use synthetic reasoning. However, this posed a new problem
how is it possible to have synthetic knowledge that is not based on empirical observation
that is, how are synthetic a priori truths possible?

Synthetic a priori judgments[edit]

Immanuel Kant, lecturing to Russian officers by I. Soyockina / V. Gracov, the Kant Museum, Kaliningrad.

Kant argues that there are synthetic judgments such as the connection of cause and effect
(e.g., "... Every effect has a cause.") where no analysis of the subject will produce the
predicate. Kant reasons that statements such as those found in geometry and Newtonian
physicsare synthetic judgments. Kant uses the classical example of 7 + 5 = 12. No amount of
analysis will find 12 in either 7 or 5. Thus Kant arrives at the conclusion that all pure
mathematics is synthetic though a priori; the number 7 is seven and the number 5 is five and
the number 12 is twelve and the same principle applies to other numerals; in other words,
they are universal and necessary. For Kant then, mathematics is synthetic judgment a priori.
This conclusion led Kant into a new problem as he wanted to establish how this could be
possible: How is pure mathematics possible? This also led him to inquire whether it could
be possible to ground synthetic a priori knowledge for a study ofmetaphysics, because most
of the principles of metaphysics from Plato through to Kant's immediate predecessors made
assertions about the world or about God or about the soul that were not self-evident but
which could not be derived from empirical observation (B18-24). For Kant, all post-Cartesian
metaphysics is mistaken from its very beginning: the empiricists are mistaken because they
[7]

assert that it is not possible to go beyond experience and the dogmatists are mistaken
because they assert that it is only possible to go beyond experience through theoretical
reason.
Therefore, Kant proposes a new basis for a science of metaphysics, posing the question:
how is a science of metaphysics possible, if at all? According to Kant, only practical reason,
the faculty of moral consciousness, the moral law of which everyone is immediately aware,
makes it possible to know things as they are. This led to his most influential contribution to
metaphysics: the abandonment of the quest to try to know the world as it is "in itself"
independent of sense experience. He demonstrated this with a thought experiment, showing
that it is not possible to meaningfully conceive of an object that exists outside of time and has
no spatial components and is not structured in accordance with the categories of the
understanding, such as substance andcausality. Although such an object cannot be
conceived, Kant argues, there is no way of showing that such an object does not exist.
Therefore, Kant says, the science of metaphysics must not attempt to reach beyond the
limits of possible experience but must discuss only those limits, thus furthering the
understanding of ourselves as thinking beings. The human mind is incapable of going
beyond experience so as to obtain a knowledge of ultimate reality, because no direct
advance can be made from pure ideas to objective existence.
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