The Critique of Pure Reason
Immanuel Kant
The Critique of Pure Reason
98 chapters·27h 6m listening
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"The Critique of Pure Reason" by Immanuel Kant is a philosophical work published in 1781. Kant investigates the limits and scope of metaphysics, asking how we can know anything before experiencing it. He challenges both rationalist and empiricist traditions, introducing revolutionary ideas about space, time, and knowledge. The central question driving the work is: "How are synthetic a priori judgments possible?" Kant argues this matter is crucial to the survival of human reason itself.
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About the book
First published in 1781 and substantially revised in 1787, the Critique of Pure Reason is Immanuel Kant’s investigation of what reason can know independently of experience. He proposes a change of perspective he compared to Copernicus’s: instead of assuming that our knowledge must conform to objects, he asks whether objects, as we experience them, must conform to the structure of our minds. Kant argues that space and time are forms of our intuition and that concepts such as cause and substance are categories the understanding brings to experience, which makes certain knowledge possible. He also shows reason falling into contradictions when it tries to reach beyond experience, to God, freedom and the soul. Demanding and systematic, the book reshaped modern philosophy.
Characters
Copernicus — The model
Kant compares his own change of method to Copernicus’s, who explained the heavens by moving the observer instead of the stars.
David Hume — The sceptic
The Scottish philosopher whose doubts about cause and effect Kant takes seriously and sets out to answer.
John Locke — The empiricist
Credited with tracing concepts back to experience, an approach Kant thinks cannot account for knowledge that is certain.
Leibnitz — The rationalist
The philosopher, spelled so in this translation, whose treatment of the mind and its concepts Kant criticises at length.
Plato — The idealist
Whose theory of ideas Kant admires as the origin of the word, while denying that reason can know such objects.
About the author
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was a German philosopher, born in Königsberg in East Prussia, the son of a harness-maker, into a devout Pietist family. He spent his whole life in and around his home city, studying and then teaching at its university, where he worked for years as a private lecturer before being appointed professor of logic and metaphysics in 1770. He was fifty-seven when he published the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), which was followed by the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), with its categorical imperative, the Critique of Practical Reason (1788) and the Critique of Judgement (1790). His essays include “What Is Enlightenment?” (1784), with its motto “Dare to know”, and Perpetual Peace (1795). Famous for the regularity of his habits, he transformed modern philosophy, and his work on knowledge, ethics and aesthetics remains central to it.