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Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics: With Selections from the Critique of Pure Reason
Kant is the central figure of modern philosophy. He sought to rebuild philosophy from the ground up, and he succeeded in permanently changing its problems and methods. This new translation of the Prolegomena, which is the best introduction to his philosophy, also includes selections from the Critique of Pure Reason, which fill out and explicate some of his central arguments. The volume is completed by a historical and philosophical introduction, explanatory notes, a chronology, and a guide to further reading.
233 pages, Paperback
Published May 13, 1997
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About the author
Immanuel Kant
2,930 books4,245 followersImmanuel Kant was an 18th-century philosopher from Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). He's regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of modern Europe & of the late Enlightenment. His most important work is The Critique of Pure Reason, an investigation of reason itself. It encompasses an attack on traditional metaphysics & epistemology, & highlights his own contribution to these areas. Other main works of his maturity are The Critique of Practical Reason, which is about ethics, & The Critique of Judgment, about esthetics & teleology.
Pursuing metaphysics involves asking questions about the ultimate nature of reality. Kant suggested that metaphysics can be reformed thru epistemology. He suggested that by understanding the sources & limits of human knowledge we can ask fruitful metaphysical questions. He asked if an object can be known to have certain properties prior to the experience of that object. He concluded that all objects that the mind can think about must conform to its manner of thought. Therefore if the mind can think only in terms of causality–which he concluded that it does–then we can know prior to experiencing them that all objects we experience must either be a cause or an effect. However, it follows from this that it's possible that there are objects of such a nature that the mind cannot think of them, & so the principle of causality, for instance, cannot be applied outside experience: hence we cannot know, for example, whether the world always existed or if it had a cause. So the grand questions of speculative metaphysics are off limits, but the sciences are firmly grounded in laws of the mind. Kant believed himself to be creating a compromise between the empiricists & the rationalists. The empiricists believed that knowledge is acquired thru experience alone, but the rationalists maintained that such knowledge is open to Cartesian doubt and that reason alone provides us with knowledge. Kant argues, however, that using reason without applying it to experience will only lead to illusions, while experience will be purely subjective without first being subsumed under pure reason. Kant’s thought was very influential in Germany during his lifetime, moving philosophy beyond the debate between the rationalists & empiricists. The philosophers Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer saw themselves as correcting and expanding Kant's system, thus bringing about various forms of German Idealism. Kant continues to be a major influence on philosophy to this day, influencing both Analytic and Continental philosophy.
Pursuing metaphysics involves asking questions about the ultimate nature of reality. Kant suggested that metaphysics can be reformed thru epistemology. He suggested that by understanding the sources & limits of human knowledge we can ask fruitful metaphysical questions. He asked if an object can be known to have certain properties prior to the experience of that object. He concluded that all objects that the mind can think about must conform to its manner of thought. Therefore if the mind can think only in terms of causality–which he concluded that it does–then we can know prior to experiencing them that all objects we experience must either be a cause or an effect. However, it follows from this that it's possible that there are objects of such a nature that the mind cannot think of them, & so the principle of causality, for instance, cannot be applied outside experience: hence we cannot know, for example, whether the world always existed or if it had a cause. So the grand questions of speculative metaphysics are off limits, but the sciences are firmly grounded in laws of the mind. Kant believed himself to be creating a compromise between the empiricists & the rationalists. The empiricists believed that knowledge is acquired thru experience alone, but the rationalists maintained that such knowledge is open to Cartesian doubt and that reason alone provides us with knowledge. Kant argues, however, that using reason without applying it to experience will only lead to illusions, while experience will be purely subjective without first being subsumed under pure reason. Kant’s thought was very influential in Germany during his lifetime, moving philosophy beyond the debate between the rationalists & empiricists. The philosophers Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer saw themselves as correcting and expanding Kant's system, thus bringing about various forms of German Idealism. Kant continues to be a major influence on philosophy to this day, influencing both Analytic and Continental philosophy.
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January 22, 2023
Hieroglyphics: A Reluctant Translation
The Prolegomena is valuable as a summarization that is intended to be less obscure and suited for popular consumption. It tries to compress Kant’s criticism of (all) previous work in metaphysics and the theory of knowledge -- first propounded in the Critique of Pure Reason, which provided a comprehensive response to early modern philosophy and a starting point for most subsequent work in philosophy.
A note on the Edition: This is a wonderful edition to approach the Prolegomena with -- meticulous introductory essay and copious notes. Plus it comes with a summary outline of all the sections! A summary of a summary. What more could you want?
Summing up the Beast
As is well known The Critique of Pure Reason is a notoriously difficult work. When first published, the early readers were not very different from modern readers — they found it incomprehensible!
Kant was a poor popularizer of his own work and when it was finally published in the spring of 1781 (with Kant nearing 57), after almost ten years of preparation and work, Kant had expected that the evident originality of the thoughts would attract immediate attention, at least among philosophers. He was… well… to be disappointed — for the first year or two he received from those whom he most expected to give his book a sympathetic hearing only a cool and uncomprehending, if not bewildered, silence.
What else would you expect for such wild intentions:
He had proposed a “Copernican Revolution” in thinking. He should have known that such stuff cannot come without a user manual.
Soon Kant caught on to this, and started having some misgivings about the fact that he was clearly not getting the reception he had expected for his masterpiece:
As a reaction to this lack of public appreciation for such a vital work that was to have "brought about a complete change of thinking," a great deal of Kant's effort during the decade of the 1780s had diverted away from further development of his system and towards the unforeseen task of clarifying the critical foundations of his system of philosophy that he thought he had completed in May 1781. This work took a number of different forms: the publication of a brief defense and attempted popularization of the Critique in 1783 until, finally, Kant came to think that an overview would be of great value to aid the reading public in comprehending the implications of the Critique. The Prolegomena was the result. We can only guess what more productive use could have been made of this period!
It is sometimes obvious in this work that Kant was pained by the need to summarize his great work (and with the necessity of expending valuable time on it). Only someone who has written an elaborate masterpiece would know how difficult it must be to write a summary of it. And Kant lets it slip often enough (one might even think deliberately) that he is not too amused by having to do so:
Kant hoped to hit more than one bird with the Prolegomena:
It was meant to offer “preparatory exercises” to the Critique of Pure Reason — not meant to replace the Critique, but as “preparatory exercises” they were intended to be read prior to the longer work. It was also meant to give an overview of that work, in which the structure and plan of the whole work could be more starkly put across — offered “as a general synopsis, with which the work itself could then be compared on occasion”. The Prolegomena are to be taken as a plan, synopsis, and guide for the Critique of Pure Reason.
He also wanted to walk his readers through the major arguments following the “analytic” method of exposition (as opposed to the “synthetic” method of the Critique): a method that starts from some given proposition or body of cognition and seeks principles from which it might be derived, as opposed to a method that first seeks to prove the principles and then to derive other propositions from them (pp. 13, 25–6).
What this means is that Kant realized that most of the readers were dazed by his daring to start the Critique from a scary emptiness of knowledge from which he set out to construct the very foundations on which any possible structure of knowledge can stand, and also the possibility of such a foundation i.e metaphysics. There he proceeds from these first (newly derived) principles of the theory of knowledge to examine the propositions that might be derived from it that are adaptable to a useful metaphysics.
In the Prolegomena, Kant reverses this and takes the propositions (i.e structure) as a given and then seeks to expose the required foundations that are needed to support such a construction. This he feels is less scary for the uninitiated reader.
It is true. The abyss is not so stark when viewed through this approach, and we can ease into our fall!
Kant’s work is easy to summarize (well, not really — but enough work has been put into it that at there least it is easy to get good summaries) but is infinitely rich with potential for the inquisitive reader. This reviewer has no intention of summarizing and thus reducing a method/system to its mere conclusions. And to summarize the method would be to recreate it in full detail! Instead the only advice tendered would be to explore Kant’s work in depth and not rest content with a superficial understanding of only the conclusions. That is precisely what Kant criticizes (in the appendix to the Prolegomena) his reviewers of doing back in the day. We should know better by now.
The Prolegomena is valuable as a summarization that is intended to be less obscure and suited for popular consumption. It tries to compress Kant’s criticism of (all) previous work in metaphysics and the theory of knowledge -- first propounded in the Critique of Pure Reason, which provided a comprehensive response to early modern philosophy and a starting point for most subsequent work in philosophy.
A note on the Edition: This is a wonderful edition to approach the Prolegomena with -- meticulous introductory essay and copious notes. Plus it comes with a summary outline of all the sections! A summary of a summary. What more could you want?
Summing up the Beast
As is well known The Critique of Pure Reason is a notoriously difficult work. When first published, the early readers were not very different from modern readers — they found it incomprehensible!
Kant was a poor popularizer of his own work and when it was finally published in the spring of 1781 (with Kant nearing 57), after almost ten years of preparation and work, Kant had expected that the evident originality of the thoughts would attract immediate attention, at least among philosophers. He was… well… to be disappointed — for the first year or two he received from those whom he most expected to give his book a sympathetic hearing only a cool and uncomprehending, if not bewildered, silence.
What else would you expect for such wild intentions:
My intention is to convince all of those who find it worthwhile to occupy themselves with metaphysics that it is unavoidably necessary to suspend their work for the present, to consider all that has happened until now as if it had not happened, and before all else to pose the question: “whether such a thing as metaphysics is even possible at all.”
He had proposed a “Copernican Revolution” in thinking. He should have known that such stuff cannot come without a user manual.
Soon Kant caught on to this, and started having some misgivings about the fact that he was clearly not getting the reception he had expected for his masterpiece:
Kant is known to have written to Herz expressing his discomfort in learning that the eminent philosopher Moses Mendelssohn had “laid my book aside,” since he felt that Mendelssohn was “the most important of all the people who could explain this theory to the world.”
Mendelssohn later wrote to a friend confessing that he did not understand the work, and professing pleasure at learning that, in the opinion of her brother, he would not be “missing much” if he continued not to understand it!
Kant’s colleague in Konigsberg, Johann Schultz, in the preface to his 1784 Exposition of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, mentioned the “nearly universal complaint about the unconquerable obscurity and unintelligibility” of the work, saying that for the largest part of the learned public it was “as if it consisted in nothing but hieroglyphics.”
As a reaction to this lack of public appreciation for such a vital work that was to have "brought about a complete change of thinking," a great deal of Kant's effort during the decade of the 1780s had diverted away from further development of his system and towards the unforeseen task of clarifying the critical foundations of his system of philosophy that he thought he had completed in May 1781. This work took a number of different forms: the publication of a brief defense and attempted popularization of the Critique in 1783 until, finally, Kant came to think that an overview would be of great value to aid the reading public in comprehending the implications of the Critique. The Prolegomena was the result. We can only guess what more productive use could have been made of this period!
It is sometimes obvious in this work that Kant was pained by the need to summarize his great work (and with the necessity of expending valuable time on it). Only someone who has written an elaborate masterpiece would know how difficult it must be to write a summary of it. And Kant lets it slip often enough (one might even think deliberately) that he is not too amused by having to do so:
But although a mere plan that might precede the Critique of Pure Reason would be unintelligible, undependable, and useless, it is by contrast all the more useful if it comes after. For one will thereby be put in the position to survey the whole, to test one by one the main points at issue in this science, and to arrange many things in the exposition better than could be done in the first execution of the work.
Whosoever finds this plan itself, which I send ahead as prolegomena for any future metaphysics, still obscure, may consider that it simply is not necessary for everyone to study metaphysics; and that in such a case one should apply one’s mental gifts to another object.
That whosoever undertakes to judge or indeed to construct a metaphysics must, however, thoroughly satisfy the challenge made here, whether it happens that they accept my solution, or fundamentally reject it and replace it with another – for they cannot dismiss it; and finally, that the much decried obscurity (a familiar cloaking for one’s own indolence or dimwittedness) has its use as well, since everybody, who with respect to all other sciences observes a wary silence, speaks master- fully, and boldly passes judgment in questions of metaphysics, because here to be sure their ignorance does not stand out clearly in relation to the science of others, but in relation to genuine critical principles, which therefore can be praised.
Kant hoped to hit more than one bird with the Prolegomena:
It was meant to offer “preparatory exercises” to the Critique of Pure Reason — not meant to replace the Critique, but as “preparatory exercises” they were intended to be read prior to the longer work. It was also meant to give an overview of that work, in which the structure and plan of the whole work could be more starkly put across — offered “as a general synopsis, with which the work itself could then be compared on occasion”. The Prolegomena are to be taken as a plan, synopsis, and guide for the Critique of Pure Reason.
He also wanted to walk his readers through the major arguments following the “analytic” method of exposition (as opposed to the “synthetic” method of the Critique): a method that starts from some given proposition or body of cognition and seeks principles from which it might be derived, as opposed to a method that first seeks to prove the principles and then to derive other propositions from them (pp. 13, 25–6).
What this means is that Kant realized that most of the readers were dazed by his daring to start the Critique from a scary emptiness of knowledge from which he set out to construct the very foundations on which any possible structure of knowledge can stand, and also the possibility of such a foundation i.e metaphysics. There he proceeds from these first (newly derived) principles of the theory of knowledge to examine the propositions that might be derived from it that are adaptable to a useful metaphysics.
In the Prolegomena, Kant reverses this and takes the propositions (i.e structure) as a given and then seeks to expose the required foundations that are needed to support such a construction. This he feels is less scary for the uninitiated reader.
It is true. The abyss is not so stark when viewed through this approach, and we can ease into our fall!
Kant’s work is easy to summarize (well, not really — but enough work has been put into it that at there least it is easy to get good summaries) but is infinitely rich with potential for the inquisitive reader. This reviewer has no intention of summarizing and thus reducing a method/system to its mere conclusions. And to summarize the method would be to recreate it in full detail! Instead the only advice tendered would be to explore Kant’s work in depth and not rest content with a superficial understanding of only the conclusions. That is precisely what Kant criticizes (in the appendix to the Prolegomena) his reviewers of doing back in the day. We should know better by now.
July 26, 2019
Kant is always worthwhile. At times, such as in his critiques he can be prolix, but in this book he is succinct. I’ve noticed that Heidegger wrote a cryptic book, ‘Being and Time’, and then did everything in his power to be understood with its follow up ‘Basic Problems in Phenomenology’, that Hume’s first book ‘Treatise on Human Nature’ was initially rejected by the reading public for its difficulty and Hume wrote an easier to understand follow up, and similarly for Schopenhauer his Volume I on ‘Will and Representation’ was a non-event when released to the point where in Bryan Magee’s book ‘The Philosophy of Schopenhauer’ he mentioned that not a single copy was sold and it was ignored until he simplified it with Volume II. (BTW, in Volume I, Schopenhauer says that he is elaborating on Kant, but not so much in Volume II). My overall point, sometimes the great philosophers think they wrote too complexly initially and needed a simple follow up to their masterpiece that would explain their original work to a wider audience. This book is definitely Kant’s attempt at that, and he does such a good job that an astute reader could just read this book and mostly understand Kant’s first critique.
One ignores Kant at their own risk. The graveyard is full of people who think they have buried Kant. They are dead and Kant still has relevance by describing a world that is relational to the context of our understanding that transcends the self and gives a transcendental deduction through the analytical and synthetic (purposely I wrote that sentence in Kantanese in order to be brief). Kant does this by giving the faculty of understanding an intuition for causation, space and time such that the appearance differentiates from the thing-in-itself. Kant will define the analytical as that which is not contradictory and differentiates that from the synthetic, that which comes from our senses through our perception and experiences.
Hume sees knowledge as experience. Berkeley (‘to be means to be perceived’) and Leibnitz (‘monads have no windows’) believe that justified true beliefs comes through thinking. Kant reconciles the two while always tending towards Hume when forced to square the circle. Kant was awakened from his dogmatic slumber by Hume and he clearly felt Hume was worthwhile. He quotes Hume frequently within this book and I would recommend reading Hume’s ‘Treatise on Human Nature’ and the short but many times referred to in this book ‘Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion’ (actually I like that one so much, I would recommend it regardless if you read this one or not). (The connections might not be obvious to everyone: Hume thanks Berkeley for inspiring him in his ‘Treatise’ and Schopenhauer credits Hume as his inspiration within Volume I of ‘Will and Representation’, oh and this book ‘Prolegomena’ mentions that Kant’s most influential influence growing up was Christian Wolfe a follower of Leibnitz).
Since the refutation of the logical positivists by William Van Orman Quine in the 1950s nobody thinks in terms of apriori and aposterior synthetic or analytic foundations and previously Gottlob Frege in the 19th century put a gaping hole in the apriori synthetic. But, even when the modern reader gets past Kant’s shaky foundational assertions there is a reason for understanding what Kant is getting at. This book gets the reader there. Hume takes causation out of the world and Kant develops a Copernican Revolution of the Mind and tries to return it back to us as part of nature and preserves freedom for the will.
Kant wants to make our knowledge universal, necessary and certain and does everything he can to make science and philosophy (metaphysics) thusly, while all around the world of his time period it keeps slipping into particular, contingent and probable. (Note that Newton’s Gravitational Theory had been understood at that time for about 75 years and was considered sacrosanct to the point that it was tautological or a synthetic aprior truth using Kant’s language). Kant in his second critique grants God existence only because of the moral law within man and through his antinomies repeated in this book demonstrates why other proofs will lead to contradictions and will discuss in this book how existence is not a predicate (take that you Anslem of Canterbury and put your ontological proof where the sun don’t shine!).
Kant tries to defend the myths inherent in metaphysics through arguing for the universal truths, a necessary universe and the certainty of our knowledge, but in the end appeals to the relational, contextual and relative knowledge based foundations as if he knew all along that metaphysics can’t resolve the mind v. body problem on its own. All of that is within Kant’s first critique and is flushed out in fairly easy to follow language within this book.
One ignores Kant at their own risk. The graveyard is full of people who think they have buried Kant. They are dead and Kant still has relevance by describing a world that is relational to the context of our understanding that transcends the self and gives a transcendental deduction through the analytical and synthetic (purposely I wrote that sentence in Kantanese in order to be brief). Kant does this by giving the faculty of understanding an intuition for causation, space and time such that the appearance differentiates from the thing-in-itself. Kant will define the analytical as that which is not contradictory and differentiates that from the synthetic, that which comes from our senses through our perception and experiences.
Hume sees knowledge as experience. Berkeley (‘to be means to be perceived’) and Leibnitz (‘monads have no windows’) believe that justified true beliefs comes through thinking. Kant reconciles the two while always tending towards Hume when forced to square the circle. Kant was awakened from his dogmatic slumber by Hume and he clearly felt Hume was worthwhile. He quotes Hume frequently within this book and I would recommend reading Hume’s ‘Treatise on Human Nature’ and the short but many times referred to in this book ‘Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion’ (actually I like that one so much, I would recommend it regardless if you read this one or not). (The connections might not be obvious to everyone: Hume thanks Berkeley for inspiring him in his ‘Treatise’ and Schopenhauer credits Hume as his inspiration within Volume I of ‘Will and Representation’, oh and this book ‘Prolegomena’ mentions that Kant’s most influential influence growing up was Christian Wolfe a follower of Leibnitz).
Since the refutation of the logical positivists by William Van Orman Quine in the 1950s nobody thinks in terms of apriori and aposterior synthetic or analytic foundations and previously Gottlob Frege in the 19th century put a gaping hole in the apriori synthetic. But, even when the modern reader gets past Kant’s shaky foundational assertions there is a reason for understanding what Kant is getting at. This book gets the reader there. Hume takes causation out of the world and Kant develops a Copernican Revolution of the Mind and tries to return it back to us as part of nature and preserves freedom for the will.
Kant wants to make our knowledge universal, necessary and certain and does everything he can to make science and philosophy (metaphysics) thusly, while all around the world of his time period it keeps slipping into particular, contingent and probable. (Note that Newton’s Gravitational Theory had been understood at that time for about 75 years and was considered sacrosanct to the point that it was tautological or a synthetic aprior truth using Kant’s language). Kant in his second critique grants God existence only because of the moral law within man and through his antinomies repeated in this book demonstrates why other proofs will lead to contradictions and will discuss in this book how existence is not a predicate (take that you Anslem of Canterbury and put your ontological proof where the sun don’t shine!).
Kant tries to defend the myths inherent in metaphysics through arguing for the universal truths, a necessary universe and the certainty of our knowledge, but in the end appeals to the relational, contextual and relative knowledge based foundations as if he knew all along that metaphysics can’t resolve the mind v. body problem on its own. All of that is within Kant’s first critique and is flushed out in fairly easy to follow language within this book.
March 17, 2021
A classic work of Kant that serves, in some ways, as a condensed version of the first Critique. It is provided as a set of preparatory exercises for engaging with the Critique. Kant approaches the subject matter from the first Critique in a slightly different way, with sections that correspond to the structure of the Critique. A valuable read for anyone interested in Kant.
April 6, 2022
WTF this shit made me CUM?????
April 30, 2015
Dickhead.
April 18, 2024
3 ☆
Critique of Pure Reason but baby.
Man likes writing way too much for something that's "an introduction to his famous work" - I think it's better if you just read the big boy.
Critique of Pure Reason but baby.
Man likes writing way too much for something that's "an introduction to his famous work" - I think it's better if you just read the big boy.
October 17, 2008
I'm coming back to the Prolegomena after some time away from them. It's kind of odd re-reading the book because I've been focusing so much on the CPR that the organization (Kant says that the Prolegomena take a "synthetic" rather than "analytic" approach to understanding pure reason's limitations and the possibility of metaphysics) is a little strange. Perhaps I'm just used to the so-called analytic approach and therefore I should set aside the Prolegomena. But I've found that there are a few points in this when Kant describes part of his argument in a helpfully clear manner, or at least in a way that's sufficiently different from the CPR that it brings new light to my attempt to understand his philosophical critique. It's taken a few months to really crack the surface, but I think that it's starting to pay off.
April 27, 2010
A briefer and more accessible look at Kant's famous Critique of Pure Reason, this work has become a standard in undergraduate philosophy programs. For those who have not read any of Kant's work, this is the one to start with. It will help the reader grow accustomed to Kant's method of analysis. It also establishes the importance of Kant's thought within the history of philosophy. Much of Kant's work was a reaction to large problems he saw in the philosophical system of his time, and he is well-known for many of the innovative ways he was able to address these problems, most notably his 'Copernican revolution' of philosophy. This is a must-read for anyone interested in philosophical thought.
March 20, 2024
I could have reasoned all of this if my understanding was more in accord with objective interpretation of my intuitions (or something).
May 26, 2017
The book itself - the translation, accompanying introduction and excerpts from the Critique - are great. Kant's writing is... not as great. Hence 3/5.
"I freely admit that the remembrance of David Hume was the very thing that many years ago first interrupted my dogmatic slumber"
Interrupted. Kant woke up, made some very good points, asked some key questions, and then sort of drifted off to sleep again. Why o why Kant? Why so many fantastic jumps in logic? Is it really just a reflection of the state of knowledge at your time? I have some sympathy for that idea, but come on - you could have taken example from Hume himself and just been a tad more reserved in your conclusions. Then you would have deserved the stature you have in modern times.
"I freely admit that the remembrance of David Hume was the very thing that many years ago first interrupted my dogmatic slumber"
Interrupted. Kant woke up, made some very good points, asked some key questions, and then sort of drifted off to sleep again. Why o why Kant? Why so many fantastic jumps in logic? Is it really just a reflection of the state of knowledge at your time? I have some sympathy for that idea, but come on - you could have taken example from Hume himself and just been a tad more reserved in your conclusions. Then you would have deserved the stature you have in modern times.
August 5, 2016
Where Kant's work is not extremely dry but intelligible. This text was essential in promulgating his transcendental idealism which reconciled the rationalists and empiricist who are so often at odds. Kant took ideas from both of their sides and created a metaphysical system which is quite brilliant, but does require some serious attention to be able to understand it fully.
December 16, 2022
was gonna reread parts of CoPR but decided to give this a spin instead, since that's what it's for. Really excellent text, practically every page is a breath of fresh air. The opening paragraph raises a challenge that many contemporary "disciplines" (poshumanism etc) fail to meet
November 25, 2008
I'm not a huge Kant fan and it's rather difficult to read. But, highly recommended for an excercise in pretension.
Read
November 10, 2009This is the first philosophy book that made me cry.
Not for the normal reasons - his terrible style, it's really fucking difficult, etc etc.
Not for the normal reasons - his terrible style, it's really fucking difficult, etc etc.
July 31, 2019
Totally uncalled for shots at Aristotle...but otherwise a great edition with selections from the Critique of Pure Reason which were helpful.
April 26, 2025
so…we are saving metaphysics from Hume. but metaphysics must be a science, with no room for “reasonable belief.”
this science can never know things “in themselves” (noumena) but only appearances. the best we can get is the “boundary” between appearances and things in themselves, where we can think about the unknown noumena only in its relation to our experience.
this science can never know things “in themselves” (noumena) but only appearances. the best we can get is the “boundary” between appearances and things in themselves, where we can think about the unknown noumena only in its relation to our experience.
April 12, 2022
Well... I had some hard times getting through this one... but word by word, sentence by sentence I managed it :) And... when read and understood, it's not so hard to see his point (or... is that just the way it seems to me ;) )
January 24, 2023
Kant makes easy things complicated for no other reason that wasting his time while sitting at home
August 18, 2023
Condensed with slightly better writing than the critique. Elaborates on a few key holes and served its purpose well
December 18, 2023
Beats reading the entire critique of pure reason.
November 8, 2024
a little bit hard to read if you are not 100% focused
February 14, 2025
Insanely technical. I would rather have skipped this. The three critiques seem way more meaningful. Coming back to this text in the future will probably be meaningful, but not at the current moment.
March 19, 2025
Brilliant, mind-opening, and authentic.
October 21, 2023
I feel there are enough reviews discussing the content of this thoroughly excellent work of philosophy, so I’ll just keep this brief. Having been interested in Kant’s work for some time and engaging with introductions and secondary literature, I had been bracing myself for the difficult slog that would be wading through Kant’s oft-decried ‘dry, impenetrable style’, something that many reviewers here also made a point of noting. However, the biggest surprise for me in reading the Prolegomena is that I found Kant’s writing to be very clear and, on the whole, thoroughly entertaining. Sure, there were a few occasions where incredibly long sentances needed to be re-read a few times, but nothing to the degree that made anything incomprehensible or frustrating. Having read a lot of more modern philosophical writings, I was fully expecting Kant to come across as very old fashioned in his writing, but I genuinely found this more engaging than a lot of what I have read. This is very purely a subjective take and I don’t blame anyone who doesn’t share my experiences here, but I just wanted to make this the point of my review to push back at all the talk about how dry and confusing the writing itself is, because I know from my personal experience that hearing this repeatedly made me resistant to reading some of Kant’s work, and I’m incredibly glad I finally did!
Edit: After my positive experience reading the Prolegomena, I went on to finally read the full Critique of Pure Reason. I won’t review that here, but I’ll just say I cannot recommend it enough for anyone who appreciated/enjoyed/was interested in the Prolegomena; CPR really deserve the amount of attention it gets, it’s genuinely a masterpiece! though I would keep in mind the fact that a lot of commentators, philosophers and scientists regularly misunderstand Kant and misrepresent his ideas, often pretty blatantly, so it’s best to go in with an open mind and seek out guides that help explain Kant’s views instead of trying to show why he was wrong by not engaging with his actual ideas.
Edit: After my positive experience reading the Prolegomena, I went on to finally read the full Critique of Pure Reason. I won’t review that here, but I’ll just say I cannot recommend it enough for anyone who appreciated/enjoyed/was interested in the Prolegomena; CPR really deserve the amount of attention it gets, it’s genuinely a masterpiece! though I would keep in mind the fact that a lot of commentators, philosophers and scientists regularly misunderstand Kant and misrepresent his ideas, often pretty blatantly, so it’s best to go in with an open mind and seek out guides that help explain Kant’s views instead of trying to show why he was wrong by not engaging with his actual ideas.
January 28, 2024
I tried reading Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason“ in the very distant past (having just about zero philosophical background —it was clearly an awful recommendation by a music teacher of mine) and quit because I could understand almost nothing.
So this time around, after working on acquiring a (very gross) understanding of the course of philosophical thought up to Kant’s time, I decided to start with his Prolegomena. Plowing through the main arguments still felt like trying to make my way through dense jungle, fighting with a machete for every inch of ground... but (I think) I was able to follow Kant’s thought. Considering the state of philosophy and science at the time, his conception of the synthetic a priori was indeed groundbreaking: it opened a whole new window into approaching knowledge and the understanding of reality.
I would normally reread the first part, but I think I will just let it sink in for a bit, and then tackle the Critique hoping his arguments will be more approachable by then.
“Since all illusion consists in taking the subjective basis for a judgement to be objective, pure reason’s knowledge of itself in its transcendent (overreaching) use will be the only prevention against the errors into which reason falls if it misconstrues its vocation and, in transcendent fashion, refers to the object I itself that which concerns only its own subject and the guidance of that subject in every use that is immanent.”
So this time around, after working on acquiring a (very gross) understanding of the course of philosophical thought up to Kant’s time, I decided to start with his Prolegomena. Plowing through the main arguments still felt like trying to make my way through dense jungle, fighting with a machete for every inch of ground... but (I think) I was able to follow Kant’s thought. Considering the state of philosophy and science at the time, his conception of the synthetic a priori was indeed groundbreaking: it opened a whole new window into approaching knowledge and the understanding of reality.
I would normally reread the first part, but I think I will just let it sink in for a bit, and then tackle the Critique hoping his arguments will be more approachable by then.
“Since all illusion consists in taking the subjective basis for a judgement to be objective, pure reason’s knowledge of itself in its transcendent (overreaching) use will be the only prevention against the errors into which reason falls if it misconstrues its vocation and, in transcendent fashion, refers to the object I itself that which concerns only its own subject and the guidance of that subject in every use that is immanent.”
October 16, 2009
Never will the 'I love it/ I like it/ It's okay...' rating system be less helpful than with this book. But it is okay as a helping hand for Kant's first Critique. Where the ideas are most compelling, this book is clearest; where the ideas are the least compelling, this book is dense and nonsensical (hello, tables of judgment/concepts/principles). Anyway, it's silly to rate this book. This edition, on the other hand, is great: it has a fantastic introduction, useful selections from the first critique, and the early reviews of the CPR that Kant responds to in the appendix to the Prolegomena. The translation could be smoother, but then, Kant could have been smoother too.
It sucks, but I think the best track is to read the CPR first, and then this, or maybe this, then CPR, then this again. I can't really see that you'd get much out of the Prolegomena alone.
March 4, 2021
After reading a few guidebooks, this book seems rather lucid and easy to read. A short exposition of his main work in the Critique, it is endlessly fascinating.
I cannot claim yet that I have fully grasped all the implications or all the arguments. Will need to read a lot more before approaching the Critique. A very powerful challenge to dogmatic metaphysics indeed.
I cannot claim yet that I have fully grasped all the implications or all the arguments. Will need to read a lot more before approaching the Critique. A very powerful challenge to dogmatic metaphysics indeed.
December 17, 2019
Simpler than the full "Critique of Pure Reason" this book is easier to follow in style of writing and in concepts. A good supplement to see the development of Kant's thought but still, not for the "light" reader.
October 1, 2024
This work is a great entry into critical philosophy. It is clear and easy to follow in its structure. Overall the argument here clarifies Kant critical philosophy mobilizing the concepts of the Critique of Pure Reason in a tightly structured shorter book.
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January 9, 2025I don't know how you say something about this one. I feel like I should say something. As dry and twisty as the language gets, Lest any man should Boast, I am the stupidest guy who ever lived and can semi-successfully relay the sufficiently important stuff. Great self-help book!
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