home | what's new | other sites | contact | about

  

 

Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

 

Kant

The Critique of Pure Reason 

 the title

 

 

return to 'critique of pure reason' contents page 

 

 

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

 

 

Editor’s prefatory comment:

Professor Victor Gijsbers, Netherlands, youtube lectures.

 

 

“Critique” = a critical investigation. Not a negative term but a neutral “analysis.”

Kant wants to think about how reason works. Where can reason give us knowledge and where can it not give us knowledge? Draw the limits of reason by a self-investigation of reason.

The Critique Of Pure Reason is reason investigating itself to determine where reason can make valid pronouncements.

“Reason” = Kant uses in two ways: (1) a broad sense (in the title), a capacity for rational thought. (2) sometimes Kant uses a narrow sense as “understanding”.

“Pure” = doesn’t have to do with sensation, experience. Reason applied to pure thoughts, that is, apart from sensation.

The Critique Of Pure Reason is about pure theoretical reason; as opposed to the second book which is about pure practical reason. Both are “pure” but the second has to do with actions in the world.

 

[I] was then making plans for a work that might perhaps have the title, “The Limits of Sense and Reason.” I planned to have it consist of two parts, a theoretical and a practical. The first part would have two sections, (1) general phenomenology and (2) metaphysics, but this only with regard to its method. (Kant's letter to Marcus Herz, 21 February 1772)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Editor's last word: