1 - Critique: knowledge, metaphysics

Summary

This chapter draws on Kant's key term, “critique”, and its relation to Kant's central concern with the possibility of knowledge and the status of metaphysics in order to present the basic character, the overall orientation and the general strategy of Kant's mature work in theoretical philosophy. In line with the introductory intent of the chapter, Kant's train of thoughts is not presented in its intricate details and technical terminology but in the form of a broadly conceived argumentative reconstruction of Kant's project that seeks to avoid partisan interpretations and is intentionally kept free of scholarly discussions, interpretive controversies and exegetical minutiae.

The primary texts underlying the portrayal of Kant's critical stand on knowledge and metaphysics are the prefaces and introductions of the first and second editions of the Critique of Pure Reason (CpR A vii–xxii and 1–16; CpR B vii–xliv and 1–30) along with §14 of the first Critique (contained in both editions of the work but so numbered only in the second one; CpR A 92–4; CpR B 124–9) and the introduction along with §§57–60, entitled “On the Determination of the Boundary of Pure Reason”, of the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (4:350–65), a popularly cast companion piece that Kant published between the first and the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. For the Prolegomena, refer to Kant (2004a).