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The Critique of Pure Reason is one of the most influential works in the history of philosophy and marks a turning point and the beginning of modern philosophy. Also referred to as Kant's "first critique," it was followed by the Critique of Practical Reason and 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."
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a German philosopher, who, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is "the central figure of modern philosophy." Kant argued that fundamental concepts of the human mind structure human experience, that reason is the source of morality, that aesthetics arises from a faculty of disinterested judgment, that space and time are forms of our understanding, and that the world as it is "in-itself" is unknowable. Kant took himself to have effected a Copernican revolution in philosophy, akin to Copernicus' reversal of the age-old belief that the sun revolved around the earth.
Autorentext
Giselle Potter has illustrated many books, including Kate and the Beanstalk by Mary Pope Osborne, an ALA-ALSC notable book; The Boy Who Loved Words by Roni Schotter, a Parents’ Choice Gold Award winner; and Cecil the Pet Glacier by Matthea Harvey. She is the author and illustrator of Tell Me What to Dream About and This Is My Dollhouse—both inspired by her daughters—and The Year I Didn't Go to School, about traveling through Italy with her parents’ puppet troupe when she was eight. Giselle also illustrates a weekly column called “Ties” for The New York Times. She lives in Rosendale, New York, with her husband and two daughters. Visit her online at GisellePotter.com.
Zusammenfassung
A long time ago, in Greece, there lived a beautiful princess named Areti. She had many suitors, but none she liked -- so she decided to make one from semolina, almonds, and sugar. Out of the bowl climbed the most handsome man Areti had ever seen: Mr. Semolina-Semolinus, a man more beautiful than love itself, and twice as rare. So when an evil queen far away steals Areti's beloved, what does she do? She orders three pairs of iron shoes, and sets off on a daring rescue attempt, for nothing will stand between this princess and her dreams.
Leseprobe
Preface to the Second Edition, 1787
Table of Contents
Whether the treatment of that portion of our knowledge which lies within the province of pure reason advances with that undeviating certainty which characterizes the progress of science, we shall be at no loss to determine. If we find those who are engaged in metaphysical pursuits, unable to come to an understanding as to the method which they ought to follow; if we find them, after the most elaborate preparations, invariably brought to a stand before the goal is reached, and compelled to retrace their steps and strike into fresh paths, we may then feel quite sure that they are far from having attained to the certainty of scientific progress and may rather be said to be merely groping about in the dark. In these circumstances we shall render an important service to reason if we succeed in simply indicating the path along which it must travel, in order to arrive at any results - even if it should be found necessary to abandon many of those aims which, without reflection, have been proposed for its attainment.
That logic has advanced in this sure course, even from the earliest times, is apparent from the fact that, since Aristotle, it has been unable to advance a step and, thus, to all appearance has reached its completion. For, if some of the moderns have thought to enlarge its domain by introducing psychological discussions on the mental faculties, such as imagination and wit, metaphysical discussions on the origin of knowledge and the different kinds of certitude, according to the difference of the objects (idealism, scepticism, and so on), or anthropological discussions on prejudices, their causes and remedies: this attempt, on the part of these authors, only shows their ignorance of the peculiar nature of logical science. We do not enlarge but disfigure the sciences when we lose sight of their respective limits and allow them to run into one another. Now logic is enclosed within limits which admit of perfectly clear definition; it is a science which has for its object nothing but the exposition and proof of the formal laws of all thought, whether it be a priori or empirical, whatever be its origin or its object, and whatever the difficulties - natural or accidental - which it encounters in the human mind.
The early success of logic must be attributed exclusively to the narrowness of its field, in which abstraction may, or rather must, be made of all the objects of cognition with their characteristic distinctions, and in which the understanding has only to deal with itself and with its own forms. It is, obviously, a much more difficult task for reason to strike into the sure path of science, where it has to deal not simply with itself, but with objects external to itself. Hence, logic is properly only a propaedeutic - forms, as it were, the vestibule of the sciences; and while it is necessary to enable us to form a correct judgement with regard to the various branches of knowledge, still the acquisition of real, substantive knowledge is to be sought only in the sciences properly so called, that is, in the objective sciences.
Now these sciences, if they can be termed rational at all, must contain elements of a priori cognition, and this cognition may stand in a twofold relation to its object. Either it may have to determine the conception of the object - which must be supplied extraneously, or it may have to establish its reality. The former is theoretical, the latter practical, rational cognition. In both, the pure or a priori element must be treated first, and must be carefully distinguished from that which is supplied from other sources. Any other method can only lead to irremediable confusion.
Mathematics and physics are the two theoretical sciences which have to determine their objects a priori. The forme…