A Commentary to Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason' — Kant — John Shaqi
A Commentary to Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason'
Kant · en
Further meanings could also be enumerated but can be formulated by the
reader for himself in the light of the ambiguities just noted.[221] The
special context in each case can alone decide how the title is to be
understood. If a really adequate definition of the purpose and scope of
the _Critique_ is sought by the reader, he must construct it for
himself. The following may perhaps serve. _The_ Critique _is an enquiry
into the sources, conditions, scope and limits of our knowledge, both a
priori and empirical, resulting in the construction of a new system of
immanent metaphysics; in the light of the conclusions thus reached, it
also yields an analysis and explanation of the transcendental illusion
to which transcendent metaphysics, both as a natural disposition and as
a professed science, is due._
Kant further complicates matters by offering a second division of the
absolutely _a priori_,[222] viz. into the original and the derivative.
Also, by implication, he classes relative _a priori_ judgments among the
propositions to be reckoned with by the _Critique_; and yet in B 4 he
speaks of the proposition, all bodies are heavy, as merely
empirical.[223]
=A criterion.=[224]--Necessity and universality are valid criteria of the
_a priori_ (= the non-empirical). This follows from Kant’s view[225] of
the empirical as synonymous with the contingent (_zufällig_). Experience
gives only the actual; the _a priori_ alone yields that which cannot be
otherwise.
“Necessity and strict universality are thus safe criteria of _a
priori_ knowledge, and are inseparable from one another. But since
in the employment of these criteria the empirical limitation of
judgments is sometimes more easily shown than their contingency,
or since, as frequently happens, their unlimited universality can
be more convincingly proved than their necessity, it is advisable
to use the two criteria separately, each being by itself
infallible.”[226]