The Grad Student’s Guide to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason
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The Critique of Pure Reason (commonly known within the field of philosophy as Kant’s “first critique” as it precedes his Critique of Practical Reason and Critique of Judgment) was first published in 1781 with a second edition following in 1787. It is the paramount philosophical publication of the Enlightenment Era and one of the most important and influential works in the history of western thought. It is also one of the cardinal texts for students of philosophy at both the graduate and undergraduate level. Any Ph.D. candidate taking her prelim exams in the history of philosophy can expect a hearty array of questions about the Critique of Pure Reason. And any graduate student interested in metaphysics or epistemology would do himself a great disservice if he failed to take a seminar on Kant’s seminal work. But this book is not intended exclusively for grad students. I hope it will serve as a valuable resource for undergraduates, teaching assistants, professors and other scholars, as well as those individuals outside of academia with a general interest in Kant’s philosophy. The Critique of Pure Reason has gained a reputation as a brilliant but inaccessible philosophical treatise, an unreadable masterpiece. While it’s true that the Critique is dense, ungainly in style, and intimidating to the uninitiated, it is not inaccessible to the careful student. Of course, a guide can be extremely helpful. That’s why this book is here. The primary aim of the first critique is to explore the scope and limits of pure reason. It is, in fact, a critical examination of reason by reason. It is, likewise, an inquiry into the possibility of metaphysics. Ultimately, Kant concludes that we cannot know complete metaphysical truth via pure reason as the continental rationalists claim. The noumenal world, out there external to our minds, is inaccessible to us. But the British empiricists miss the mark as well. There are important truths, for instance, universal mathematical and scientific truths, which we can know via pure reason. This is because it is possible to know certain synthetic a priori judgments. Kant’s synthesis of rationalism and empiricism is but one of the revolutionary turns in the Critique of Pure Reason. Another revolutionary turn comes in Kant’s idealist view of time and space. According to Kant, time and space are not objectively real, but rather a framework within which our experiences are constructed. It is, in large part, this framework of time and space that makes our sensory experiences possible, or at least meaningful. This view has momentous (perhaps even alarming) implications for our traditional notion of causality. Given Kant’s view, if Y follows X (or if indeed, we say that X causes Y), it is because our mind arranges it so. Our mind is not a tabula rasa, but rather, an active shaper and creator of our experiences.
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About the Book
While Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is one of the most important and influential philosophical works in the history of Western thought, it is also known for being as inaccessible as it is brilliant—an unreadable masterpiece. And as a cardinal text for students of philosophy in both the graduate and undergraduate levels, Kant’s first critique and its dense, ungainly style can therefore stand as an intimidating and even monumental challenge. But for careful students interested in exploring this pivotal work, Kant’s first critique can have profound implications for their understandings of both metaphysics and epistemology—as well as of the history of philosophy in general. The Grad Student’s Guide to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is a valuable resource for students, professors, and scholars interested in learning more about Kant’s philosophy. It provides definitions for key terms that students of Kant’s first critique will need to understand, such as analytic, synthetic, a priori, and a posteriori. It discusses the nature and role of synthetic a priori judgments as well as Kant’s notion of experience and some of its important components. Including an examination of the historical context of the problem at the heart of Kant’s critique, it also explains Kant’s transcendental idealism, the transcendental proof, and his so-called first antinomy. With terse and lucid treatments of Kant’s categories and principles—as well as a discussion of Kant’s critical refutation of skepticism, idealism, and dogmatic rationalism—this guidebook will offer students an illuminating way to make sense of Kant’s masterwork.
About the Author
Joseph W. Long earned his PhD in philosophy from Purdue University in 2005. He has taught more than fifty philosophy courses at Purdue University, Northwestern College, University of St. Thomas, and IUPUI, and a supplemental instruction course on cable television for Ball State University.