The Critique of Pure Reason (e-Book)

The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant published in 1781, is one of the most influential works in the history of philosophy.In the preface to the edition Kant explains what he means by a critique of pure reason: "I do not mean by this a critique of books and systems, but of the faculty of reason in general, in respect of all knowledge after which it may strive independently of all experience."

In the introduction to The Critique of Pure Reason, Kant explains that Hume stopped short of considering that a synthetic judgement could be made 'a priori'. Kant's goal was to find some way to derive cause and effect without relying on empirical knowledege. He rejects analytical methods for this, arguing that analytical reasoning cannot tell us anything that is not already self-evident. Instead, Kant argued that it would be necessary to use synthetic reasoning. However, this posed a new problem — how is it possible to have synthetic knowledge that is not based on empirical observation — that is, how are synthetic truths possible?

Before Kant, it was generally held that truths of reason must be analytic, meaning that what is stated in the predicate must already be present in the subject (for example, "An intelligent man is intelligent" or "An intelligent man is a man"). In either case, the judgment is analytic because it is ascertained by analyzing the subject. It was thought that all truths of reason, or necessary truths, are of this kind: that in all of them there is a predicate that is only part of the subject of which it is asserted. If this were so, attempting to deny anything that could be known a priori (for example, "An intelligent man is not intelligent" or "An intelligent man is not a man") would involve a contradiction. It was therefore thought that the law of contradiction is sufficient to establish all a priori knowledge.

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