Appendix

Summary

Since all the paths that have been taken before now have not attained this end, and will never be able to attain it without a preceding critique of pure reason, the demand that the attempt at such a critique which is now before the public be subjected to an exact and careful examination does not seem unreasonable – unless one holds it to be still more advisable rather to relinquish completely all claims to metaphysics, in which case, if one only remains true to one's intention, there is nothing to object to in this. If the course of events is taken as it actually runs and not as it should run, then there are two kinds of judgments: a judgment that precedes the investigation, and in our case this is one in which the reader, from his own metaphysics, passes judgment on the Critique of Pure Reason (which is supposed first of all to investigate the possibility of that metaphysics); and then a different judgment that comes after the investigation, in which the reader is able to set aside for a while the consequences of the critical investigation, which may strongly repudiate the metaphysics he otherwise accepts, and first tests the grounds from which these consequences may have been derived. If what ordinary metaphysics presents were undeniably certain (like geometry, for instance), the first way of judging would be valid; for if the consequences of certain principles conflict with undeniable truths, then these principles are false and are to be rejected without any further investigation.