Introduction
The Critique
of Pure Reason
(1781, Riga; second edition 1787) is a book by Immanuel
Kantthat
has exerted an enduring influence on Western
philosophy.
Also referred to as Kant's First
Critique,
it was followed by the Critique
of Practical Reason (1788)
and the Critique
of Judgment (1790).
In the preface to the first edition Kant explains that by a critique
of pure reason he
means not "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" and that he aims to
reach a decision about "the possibility or impossibility of
metaphysics in general". Kant builds on the work
of empiricist philosophers
such as John
Locke and David
Hume,
as well as rationalists such
as Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibniz and Christian
Wolff.
He expounds new ideas on the nature of space
and time,
and tries to provide solutions to Hume's scepticism regarding human
knowledge of the relation of cause and effect, and René
Descartes'
scepticism 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".
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Summary of the Critique of Pure Reason:
The
Critique of Pure Reason, published by Immanuel Kant in 1781, is one
of the most complex structures and the most significant of modern
philosophy, bringing a revolution at least as great as that of
Descartes and his Discourse on Method.
The
complexity of the first review (the second is the critique of
practical reason, and the third is a critique of the faculty of
judging), is such that Kant himself published an introductory text,
entitled Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics.
The
aim of this book is summed up quite easily, however: metaphysics is a
battle that needs to be ordered. Kant proposes to everyone agreed,
giving a new status to reason and new contours to the understanding.
In summary, the critique of pure reason tries to define credible to
the question: How do I know? To this question Kant answers, I can
think of the objects of metaphysics (God, I, the world), but not
knowing in the sense that I know the laws of physics
Analysis of the Critique of Pure Reason Kant:
Kant
makes two crucial distinction: between a priori and a posteriori and
between analytic and synthetic judgments.
A
posteriori knowledge is knowledge gained from the experience and
knowledge a priori knowledge is necessary and universal, independent
of experience, such as our knowledge of mathematics.
In
an analytical statement, the predicate is contained in the concept in
the subject, as, for example, in Judgement, “a bachelor is an
unmarried man.” In summary judgments, the predicate contains
information not included in the concept. Typically, one associates
with the knowledge a posteriori synthetic judgments a priori
knowledge and analytical judgments. For example, the decision “all
swans are white” is synthetic because the whiteness is not a part
of the concept of “Swan” (a black swan is a swan yet), but it is
also a posteriori because we can not whether all swans are white.
Kant
argues that math and science principles are synthetic a priori
knowledge. For example, the ruling “7 + 5 = 12” is a priori
because it is a necessary and universal truth, and it is synthetic,
because the concept of “12” is not contained in the concept of “7
+ 5” .
Because
man is capable of synthetic knowledge a priori, pure reason is then
able to know important truths. However, Kant is at odds with the
rationalist metaphysics poses the omnipotence of reason, capable of
penetrating the mysteries. On the contrary, Kant argues that it is
about shaping the reality around him. The subject is not only
affected by the world, he is actively involved in its creation. We
shall return to this Copernican revolution.
Time
and space, according to Kant, are pure intuitions of our sensibility,
and concepts of physics such as causality or inertia are pure
intuitions of our faculty of understanding. In other words, the
subject experiences the real and the information received is
processed, organized, analyzed by reason. However, the reality is
that a compound of phenomena, behind which there are things in
themselves (“noumena”). The phenomena is the world as it appears
on the noumena the world as it is, without a viewer.
After
giving an explanation of how synthetic a priori knowledge makes math
and science possible, Kant turns to metaphysics. Metaphysics is the
realm of pure reason, ie the scope of a priori
Kant, rationalism and empiricism to criticism
In
the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant achieves a synthesis between
rationalist and empiricist traditions. Rationalism, it takes up the
idea that pure reason is capable of importt knowledge, and
empiricism, he admits the idea that knowledge comes primarily from
the experience. Thus, it avoids the metaphysical speculations of the
rationalists without falling into metaphysical skepticism.
Kant
realizes what he calls a Copernican revolution in philosophy: that is
to overthrow the report subject / object, that is to ask that is the
thought that perceives the object. Kant denies the idea of making
the mind a blank page or a receiver of stimuli in the world. The mind
does not only receive information, it also provides information that
shape. Knowledge, and is not something that exists in the outside
world and is then introduced into an open mind. Knowledge is rather
something created by the mind.
Kant
differs from its predecessors by claiming that rationalists pure
reason can discern the shape, but not the content of reality.
Rationalists such as Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz have speculated
about the nature of time, space, causality, God, thinking that pure
reason was entitled to find satisfactory answers to these objects.
The
critique of pure reason opens a third way for metaphysics, half way
between rationalism that claims to know everything, and empiricism
that defies reason to be able to find anything out of the experience:
this path is that of criticism (or transcendental philosophy), which
limits the power of reason to re-legitimized.
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