CHID495, Spr-2010 reading guide
Reading Guide: CPR, Preface
Motto
-Kant included an epigraph from Bacon in the revision of the CPR. This passage reveals Kant’s goal of providing a
restoration of philosophy and to put an end to its “infinite errors.”
-Bacon was the first modern to fully acknowledge the value of criticism (of the tradition): if you are groping about
in endless contradictions and paradoxes, look to yourself: your nature, your upbringing, the language you use, and
the education you receive. Bacon’s Idols of the Mind is a kind of proto-Critical Philosophy
Preface <A> (1781)
Metaphysics is a Battlefield
-metaphysics is a battlefield of the “endless controversies” produced by a “certain species of [Reason’s] cognitions
“Reason falls into perplexity through no fault of its own”; it has to do with the nature of Reason
The Queen is Dead
-once “queen,” metaphysics is no longer central to the sciences: it has become “powerless”
-under Wolff and Baumgarten, metaphysics was “despotic,” and finally degenerated into “anarchy”
-Locke’s formulation of the Understanding tried to provide a solution, tracing the ground of metaphysics to
experience (of the senses), but it was inadequate, so dogmatism resumed
-“Indifferentism” set in, an appeal to common sense and matters of fact only
The Only Path Left: “The Critique of the Faculty of Reason in General”
-to decide the im/possibility of metaphysics, determine its sources, boundaries from examination of its principles
-Kant: on this path (of criticism of reason), I removed all the errors in the nonexperiential use of Reason; I solved
all the problems pertaining to metaphysics
Kant: How’d I do it? – Look to Logic
-common logic provides a start: enumerate the “simple acts of reason” (judgments) we can make
-this poses a question: how far can we go without the “material and assistance” experience?
The Faculty of Understanding “Cost me the most”
-two aspects: object of pure understanding, and understanding itself
-Kant: I am absolutely certain and clear about concepts; but about intuitions less so
Yes, the CPR is Long
-Kant: it’s long because this is hard, and because it will actually take shorter time to for you to understand it at this
length than if I wrote more abstractly and concisely
Preface <B> (1787 revision)
“The Secure Course of a Science”
-the state of “cognitions belonging to the concern of reason” is groping about: metaphysics is lost
The Example of Logic
-it stopped advancing; others have tried to supplement it with psychology, anthropology, metaphysics, all in vain
-Logic’s success derives from its limitation: it concerns the “formal rules of all thinking”
“…in logic, therefore, the understanding has to do with nothing further than itself and its own form. How much
more difficult, naturally, must it be for reason to enter upon the secure path of science if it does not have merely to
do with itself, but has to deal with objects too”
-Logic is only the “propadeutic” (literally “before-teaching”) of the sciences
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CHID495, Spr-2010 reading guide
Reason and the Sciences
-in order for reason to operate in them there must be a priori cognitions which relate to their objects (in 2 ways)
--theoretical cognition of reason which determines a given object and its concept (this is “pure,” ie. Pure Reason)
--practical cognition of reason which makes an object actual (Practical Reason)
-Math is a pure theoretical cognition of reason
-Physics is a theoretical cognition of reason, but has some connection to sources other than reason (empirical)
-Natural Sciences: fruitful inquiry into nature requires the application of principles of reason
Metaphysics is a Sysiphusian Battlefield
-metaphysics is a “speculative cognition of reason”
-Kant wonders:
--why has nature afflicted our reason with the restless striving for such a path (of a science that produces stable
advancement)?
--how can we bring the use of Pure Reason to the state of a successful science like the aforementioned ones?
--what can we do to assure ourselves of progress? (look to the successful examples, e.g. math, natural science)
A Reversal in Strategy: Objects Conform to Cognition
-After Locke, we assumed our cognition must conform to objects; but all attempts at reasoning abstracted from
experience of objects has “come to nothing” in this model (ala Tabula Rasa)
-Thus, we should test the opposite model: our experience of objects must conform to our cognition
-If Locke is completely right, and intuitions (perceptions) of objects must conform to the constitution of objects,
there’s no hope of cognizing anything about them independent of experience (a priori)
-intuitions are not cognition, for that they need to be related to the Understanding; if they relate in Locke’s model,
i.e. our concepts conform to our intuitions, we’re stuck; if intuitions conform to our concepts (of the
Understanding), then we have a way to proceed:
--experience is a cognition requiring the Understanding, “whose rule I have to presuppose in myself before any
object is given to me, hence a priori, which rule is expressed in concepts a priori, to which all objects of experience
must therefore necessarily conform, and with which they must agree” (111, italics added)
The Gains: A Priori Concepts and Proofs of A Priori Principles of Experience
-this puts metaphysics on a “secure course” in the sense that we can discover “a priori concepts”
-and it provides proofs of the laws (principles) that are the a priori ground of nature (when defined as “the sum
total of objects of experience”)
-both of these are impossible if we stop with Locke/Hume
The Collateral Damage & Solution to Contradictions
-Pure Reason can never get “beyond the boundaries of possible experience”
-we cognize Appearances, not the Things In Themselves
-the search for the unconditioned by our faculty of Reason drives us to go beyond experience and all appearances
(the conditional)
-if we assume cognition from experience conforms to the “thing in itself” then we can never think the
unconditioned without contradiction
-but, if we assume cognition consists in the fact that given things “conform to our way of representing,” then
contradiction about the unconditioned disappears
Metaphysics “Purified Through Criticism”
-although establishing that speculative reason cannot go beyond possible experience seems limiting, it is the only
thing that will save the practical use of reason
-furthermore, the principles that speculative reason would use to go beyond experience imply modifying the
boundaries of our Sensibility
-the stakes: the possibility of moral use of Reason (the topic of the CPrR)
Summary: p.115
-space and time are the forms of our Sensibility, therefore the conditions of appearances (but not the things in
themselves)
-therefore, also, there can be no concepts of the Understanding without given intuitions, hence no cognition of
things in themselves (yet we can think them as such)
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CHID495, Spr-2010 reading guide
-without the appearance/thing-in-itself distinction for cognition, freedom is impossible and all things would be
subject to the laws of bodies, the “mechanism of nature” (material determinism, goodbye all possible morality)
-ideas like God, freedom, immortality of the soul, love, etc. (all the things we want to “know”) cannot be objects of
experience
-the snarky rebuke of “imagined possessions” of speculative reason, p.117-8: “- Thus…”
“Through criticism alone can we sever the very root of materialism, fatalism, atheism, of freethinking unbelief, of
enthusiasm and superstition, which can become generally injurious, and finally also of idealism and skepticism,
which are more dangerous to the schools and can hardly be transmitted to the public” (119)
Dogmatic Procedure vs. Unreflective Dogmatism
-dogmatism is the dogmatic procedure of pure reason, without critique
-criticism is dogmatic in procedure, and systematic
-Wolff’s methods are exemplary: aim to principles, strictness of proofs, determination of concepts
Comments on 2nd Ed, p.120+
-Kant: I got the central arguments right, no changes
-presentation revised, topical arguments tightened and clarified
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