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
And thus I conclude the analytical solution of the main question which
I had proposed: How is metaphysics in general possible? by ascending
from the data of its actual use in its consequences, to the grounds of
its possibility.
SCHOLIA.
SOLUTION OF THE GENERAL QUESTION OF THE PROLEGOMENA, "HOW IS
METAPHYSICS POSSIBLE AS A SCIENCE?"
Metaphysics, as a natural disposition of reason, is actual, but if
considered by itself alone (as the analytical solution of the third
principal question showed), dialectical and illusory. If we think of
taking principles from it, and in using them follow the natural, but
on that account not less false, illusion, we can never produce
science, but only a vain dialectical art, in which one school may
outdo another, but none can ever acquire a just and lasting
approbation.
In order that as a science metaphysics may be entitled to claim not
mere fallacious plausibility, but in sight and conviction, a Critique
of Reason must itself exhibit the whole stock of a priori concepts,
their division according to their various sources (Sensibility,
Understanding, and Reason), together with a complete table of them,
the analysis of all these concepts, with all their consequences,
especially by means of the deduction of these concepts, the
possibility of synthetical cognition a priori, the principles of its
application and finally its bounds, all in a complete system.
Critique, therefore, and critique alone, contains in itself the whole
well-proved and well-tested plan, and even all the means required to
accomplish metaphysics, as a science; by other ways and means it is
impossible. The question here therefore is not so much how this
performance is possible, as how to set it going, and induce men of
clear heads to quit their hitherto perverted and fruitless cultivation
for one that will not deceive, and how such a union for the common end
may best be directed.
This much is certain, that whoever has once tasted Critique will be
ever after disgusted with all dogmatical twaddle which he formerly put
up with, because his reason must have something, and could find
nothing better for its support.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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