Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
Overview
Published after Critique of Pure Reason, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics restates and summarizes many of the main arguments. Kant also applies what he calls an “analytic” method, with a view to making his ideas clearer. The book also argues for the importance of Critique of Pure Reason and rebuts a negative review.
- Summarizes the main points of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason
- Features an essay on Kant by the translator, Paul Carus
- Includes articles studying Kant’s life and philosophy
- Kant’s Prolegomena
- Essay on Kant’s Philosophy by Dr. Paul Carus
- Supplementary Materials for the Study of Kant’s Life and Philosophy
- Kant’s Life and Writings
- The Critique of Practical Reason and the Critique of Judgment
- Kant’s Views on Religion
- Kant and Materialism
- Kant and Deism
- The Kantian Philosophy
- Hostile Estimate of Kant by a Swedenborgian
- Facsimile and Translation of a Letter of Kant to His Brother
- Chronology of Kant’s Life and Publications
Top Highlights
“concerning the origin, not concerning the indispensable need of the concept” (Page 5)
“All metaphysicians are therefore solemnly and legally suspended from their occupations till they shall have answered in a satisfactory manner the question, ‘How are synthetic cognitions a priori possible?’ For the answer contains the only credentials which they must show when they have anything to offer in the name of pure reason. But if they do not possess these credentials, they can expect nothing else of reasonable people, who have been deceived so often, than to be dismissed without further ado.” (Page 29)
“Since the Essays of Locke and Leibnitz, or rather since the origin of metaphysics so far as we know its history, nothing has ever happened which was more decisive to its fate than the attack made upon it by David Hume.” (Page 3)
“ cause and effect was by no means the only idea by which the understanding thinks the connexion of things a priori” (Page 7)
“but whether that concept could be thought by reason a priori” (Page 5)
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was born in Königsberg, Prussia, in a Pietist Lutheran family. He attended the University of Königsberg, becoming a lecturer there after graduation. In 1770, he accepted the chair of logic and metaphysics at Königsberg. He published and taught a variety of subjects, but focused on metaphysics and its relationship to physics and mathematics. He was heavily influenced by the writings of Leibniz, Newton, Hume, and Rousseau, drawing on both the empiricist and the rationalist schools. He wrote works of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, and teleology. His revolutionary contribution to philosophy is his argument that human knowledge of the world comes from sense experience but is shaped by innate structures inherent in human reason.