Critique of Pure Reason
1781 philosophical work by Immanuel Kant
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Immanuel Kant's 1781 "Critique of Pure Reason" is a foundational philosophical work that examines what the human mind can actually know and understand about the world. The book fundamentally reshaped Western philosophy by arguing that our knowledge depends not just on what we observe, but also on the structure of how our minds process that information.
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Wikidata facts
- Read free · Project Gutenberg
- #4280
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- Kant-KdrV-1781.png
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- Commons category
- Kritik der reinen Vernunft
- publication date
- 1787-00-00
- title
- Critique of Pure Reason
- first line
- Erfahrung ist ohne Zweifel das erste Product, welches unser Verstand hervorbringt, indem er den rohen Stoff sinnlicher Empfindungen bearbeitet. Sie ist eben dadurch die erste Belehrung, und im Fortgange so unerschöpflich an neuem Unterricht, daß das zusammengekettete Leben aller künftigen Zeugungen an neuen Kentnissen, die auf diesem Boden gesammlet werden können, niemals Mangel haben wird.
- last line
- Wenn der Leser diesen in meiner Gesellschaft durchzuwandern Gefälligkeit und Gedult gehabt hat, so mag er iezt urtheilen, ob nicht, wenn es ihm beliebt, das Seinige dazu beizutragen, um diesen Fußsteig zur Heeresstrasse zu machen, dasienige, was viele Jahrhunderte nicht leisten konten, noch vor Ablauf des gegenwärtigen erreicht werden möge: nemlich, die menschliche Vernunft in dem, was ihre Wißbegierde iederzeit, bisher aber vergeblich beschäftigt hat, zur völligen Befriedigung zu bringen.
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Article
Critique of Pure Reason (German: Kritik der reinen Vernunft; 1781; second edition 1787) is a book by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, in which the author seeks to determine the limits and scope of metaphysics. Also referred to as Kant's "First Critique", it was followed by his Critique of Practical Reason (1788) and Critique of Judgment (1790). In the preface to the first edition, Kant explains that by a "critique of pure reason" he means a critique "of the faculty of reason in general, in respect of all knowledge after which it may strive independently of all experience" and that he aims to decide on "the possibility or impossibility of metaphysics".
Kant builds on the work of empiricist philosophers such as John Locke and David Hume, as well as rationalist philosophers such as René Descartes, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Christian Wolff. He expounds new ideas on the nature of space and time, and tries to provide solutions to the skepticism of Hume regarding knowledge of the relation of cause and effect and that of René Descartes regarding knowledge of the external world. This is argued through the transcendental idealism of objects (as appearance) and their form of appearance. Kant regards the former "as mere representations and not as things in themselves", and the latter as "only sensible forms of our intuition, but not determinations given for themselves or conditions of objects as things in themselves". This grants the possibility of a priori knowledge, since objects as appearance "must conform to our cognition...which is to establish something about objects before they are given to us." Knowledge independent of experience Kant calls "a priori" knowledge, while knowledge obtained through experience is termed "a posteriori". According to Kant, a proposition is a priori if it is necessary and universal. A proposition is necessary if it is not false in any case and so cannot be rejected; rejection is contradiction. A proposition is universal if it is true in all cases, and so does not admit of any exceptions. Knowledge gained a posteriori through the senses, Kant argues, never imparts absolute necessity and universality, because it is possible that we might encounter an exception.