Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future MetaphysicsKant, Immanuel
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
Kant, Immanuel
Knowledge, Theory of -- Early works to 1800; Metaphysics -- Early works to 1800
But metaphysics leads us towards bounds in the dialectical attempts of
pure reason (not undertaken arbitrarily or wantonly, but stimulated
thereto by the nature of reason itself). And the transcendental Ideas,
as they do not admit of evasion, and are never capable of realisation,
serve to point out to us actually not only the bounds of the pure use
of reason, but also the way to determine them. Such is the end and the
use of this natural predisposition of our reason, which has brought
forth metaphysics as its favorite child, whose generation, like every
other in the world, is not to be ascribed to blind chance, but to an
original germ, wisely organised for great ends. For metaphysics, in
its fundamental features, perhaps more than any other science, is
placed in us by nature itself, and cannot be considered the production
of an arbitrary choice or a casual enlargement in the progress of
experience from which it is quite disparate.
Reason with all its concepts and laws of the understanding, which
suffice for empirical use, i.e., within the sensible world, finds in
itself no satisfaction because ever-recurring questions deprive us of
all hope of their complete solution. The transcendental ideas, which
have that completion in view, are such problems of reason. But it sees
clearly, that the sensuous world cannot contain this completion,
neither consequently can all the concepts, which serve merely for
understanding the world of sense, such as space and time, and whatever
we have adduced under the name of pure concepts of the understanding.
The sensuous world is nothing but a chain of appearances connected
according to universal laws; it has therefore no subsistence by
itself; it is not the thing in itself, and consequently must point to
that which contains the basis of this experience, to beings which
cannot be cognised merely as phenomena, but as things in themselves.
In the cognition of them alone reason can hope to satisfy its desire
of completeness in proceeding from the conditioned to its conditions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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