The Critique Of Pure Reason
contributor: Eric Lease Morgan (Infomotions, Inc.)
creator: Kant, Immanuel
date: 0000-00-00
extent: 1271163
format: text/plain
language: en
publisher: Eris Etext Project
rights: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/GPL/2.0/
source: 7
subject: reason
subject: conception
subject: experience
subject: time
subject: object
subject: conceptions
subject: called
subject: consider
subject: questions
subject: own
subject: nature
subject: kant
subject: immanuel
subject: critique
subject: pure
subject: western
subject: philosophy
type: text
local mirror: kant-critique-142.txt
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sort title: Critique Of Pure Reason, The
full text: 1781 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON by Immanuel Kant translated by J. M. D. Meiklejohn PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION, 1781 Human reason, in one sphere of its cognition, is called upon to consider questions, which it cannot decline, as they are presented by its own nature, but which it cannot answer, as they transcend every faculty of the mind. It falls into this difficulty without any fault of its own. It begins with principles, which cannot be dispensed with in the field of experience, and the truth and sufficiency of which are, at the same time, insured by experience. With these principles it rises, in obedience to the laws of its own nature, to ever higher and more remote conditions. But it quickly discovers that, in this way, its labours must remain ever incomplete, because new questions never cease to present themselves; and thus it finds itself compelled to have recourse to principles which transcend the region of experience, while they are regarded by common sense without distrust. It thus falls into confusion and contradictions, from which it conjectures the presence of latent errors, which, however, it is unable to discover, because the principles it employs, transcending the limits of experience, cannot be tested by that criterion. The arena of these endless contests is called Metaphysic. Time was, when she was the queen of all the sciences; and, if we take the will for the deed, she certainly deserves, so far as regards the high importance of her object-matter, this title of honour. Now, it is the fashion of the time to heap contempt and scorn upon her; and the matron mourns, forlorn and forsaken, like Hecuba: Modo maxima rerum, Tot generis, natisque potens... Nunc trahor exul, inops.* *Ovid, Metamorphoses. [xiii, "But late on the pinnacle of fame, strong in my many sons. now exiled, penniless."] At first, her government, under the administration of the dogmatists, was an absolute despotism. But, as the legislative continued to show traces of the ancient barb…