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
Natural theology is such a concept at the boundary of human reason,
being constrained to look beyond this boundary to the Idea of a
Supreme Being (and, for practical purposes to that of an intelligible
world also), not in order to determine anything relatively to this
pure creation of the understanding, which lies beyond the world of
sense, but in order to guide the use of reason within it according to
principles of the greatest possible (theoretical as well as practical)
unity. For this purpose we make use of the reference of the world of
sense to an independent reason, as the cause of all its connexions.
Thereby we do not purely invent a being, but, as beyond the sensible
world there must be something that can only be thought by the pure
understanding, we determine that something in this particular way,
though only of course according to analogy.
And thus there remains our original proposition, which is the résumé
of the whole Critique: "that reason by all its a priori principles
never teaches us anything more than objects of possible experience,
and even of these nothing more than can be cognised in experience."
But this limitation does not prevent reason leading us to the
objective boundary of experience, viz., to the reference to something
which is not itself an object of experience, but is the ground of all
experience. Reason does not however teach us anything concerning the
thing in itself: it only instructs us as regards its own complete and
highest use in the field of possible experience. But this is all that
can be reasonably desired in the present case, and with which we have
cause to be satisfied.
§ 60. Thus we have fully exhibited metaphysics as it is actually
given in the natural predisposition of human reason, and in that which
constitutes the essential end of its pursuit, according to its
subjective possibility. Though we have found, that this merely natural
use of such a predisposition of our reason, if no discipline arising
only from a scientific critique bridles and sets limits to it,
involves us in transcendent, either apparently or really conflicting,
dialectical syllogisms; and this fallacious metaphysics is not only
unnecessary as regards the promotion of our knowledge of nature, but
even disadvantageous to it: there yet remains a problem worthy of
solution, which is to find out the natural ends intended by this
disposition to transcendent concepts in our reason, because everything
that lies in nature must be originally intended for some useful
purpose.
Such an inquiry is of a doubtful nature; and I acknowledge, that what
I can say about it is conjecture only, like every speculation about
the first ends of nature. The question does not concern the objective
validity of metaphysical judgments, but our natural predisposition to
them, and therefore does not belong to the system of metaphysics but
to anthropology.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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