| Title | : | Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0872205932 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780872205932 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 160 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1783 |
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics Reviews
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Impressive. Open the doors of perception!
I didn't understand everything; it feels good to read a book without a character, story, or philosophy (the pros will laugh.) For a simple curious person devoid of knowledge in this area, I have not demonstrated human perception; what is metaphysics: the intuition of what is not physically conceivable. That I am corrected if I am wrong.
There is no philosophy; there is only a demonstration of our ignorance of what surrounds us, despite what one might think given our daily life.
As I read it, I told myself that a person like Einstein (the only one I know a bit) is like a metaphysician. I then demonstrated his intuition so that we mortals could understand his reasoning.
So metaphysics is beautiful and is indeed a science. -
کتاب
کانت اول کتاب "نقد عقل محض" رو نوشت. اما بعد از یک سال انتظار، متوجه شد که انگار کسی کتاب رو نخونده، از بس که طولانیه، و سخت نوشته شده، و مخصوصاً این که فلسفه ای به کلی جدید بنیان گذاشته، و خواننده ها با ذهنیتی که از فلسفۀ قدیم دارن، درست متوجه نمیشن که حرف حساب کانت در این درازگویی ها چیه.
این باعث شد که دست به کار بشه و خلاصه ای روشن از کتاب تهیه کنه، و توضیح بده که مقصودش از نوشتن کتاب چیه و چه مسئله ای رو می خواد جواب بده، و حاصل شد "تمهیدات"، همین کتاب حاضر.
من قبل از تمهیدات سه کتاب راجع به کانت خونده بودم، و هر چند از هر سه تا خیلی یاد گرفته بودم، ولی هنوز متوجه نمی شدم مسئلۀ اصلی کانت چیه. نمی دونم اون کتاب ها توضیح نداده بودن، یا من متوجه نمی شدم. از یکی از بزرگواران گودریدز پرسیدم که بعد از این سه کتاب، چه کتابی راجع به کانت بخونم؟ و ایشون گفتن: شروع کنم به خوندن از خود کانت، و این کتاب رو توصیه کردن. همون موقع کتاب رو خریدم، اما به مدت یک سال می ترسیدم طرفش برم. تا این که اخیراً بعد از خوندن راجع به "روشنگری" و بعدتر تلاش نافرجامم برای فهم آینشتاین، متوجه شدم که لازمه باز از کانت بخونم. پس عزمم رو جزم کردم و این کتاب رو از قفسه برداشتم.
کتاب ترجمۀ خیلی خوبی داره، هر چند این به معنای راحت بودن کتاب نیست. خیلی از بخش ها رو دو یا سه بار می خوندم تا درست متوجه بشم، و خیلی از بخش ها رو فقط با تکیه به چیزهایی که از قبل می دونستم متوجه می شدم. ولی در کل تجربۀ خوبی بود، مواجه شدن رو در رو با فیلسوفی که خیلی وقت بود از مواجهه باهاش فرار می کردم. به خصوص فصل های پایانی کتاب، جایی که وظیفۀ تنظیمی فلسفه رو توضیح میده، به نظرم هم راحت تر و هم جذاب تر بودن.
در پایین توضیحی اجمالی از هدف کانت از کتاب نوشتم، که اگه علاقه ای ندارید می تونید ازش صرف نظر کنید.
کانت به دنبال چیست؟ -
My object is to persuade all those who think metaphysics worth studying that it is absolutely necessary to pause a moment and, disregarding all that has been done, to propose first the preliminary question, "Whether such a thing as metaphysics be at all possible?"
With the completion of this essaying piece by the remarkably ideal Königsberger, I have, more or less, put paid to my desire to read Kant without having gained any degree of comprehension commensurate with the amount of time I have put in. This is not in any way the fault of Kant—I am simply not constituted to be a philosopher of higher rank than one who pinches just enough off of the cerebrally sound edifice to be able to pretend towards parleying its contours and construct. It was actually rather fun trying to grasp the message, and coevally disheartening to discover that, heading into the greying era, my mental faculties are too slippery and scabrous to be able to accomplish such. Still, it's worth a bit of gabbling about, if only because there are probably sufficient people about who don't get the dude any better, and hence would be uncomfortable with boldly proclaiming that this emperor, having finally managed egress from the water closet, is sashaying about desnudo.
If it is a science, how does it happen that it cannot, like other sciences, obtain universal and permanent recognition? If not, how can it maintain its pretensions, and keep the human understanding in suspense with hopes never ceasing, yet never fulfilled? Whether then we demonstrate our knowledge or our ignorance in this field, we must come once and for all to a definite conclusion respecting the nature of this so-called science, which cannot possibly remain on its present footing. It seems almost ridiculous, while every other science is continually advancing, that in this, which pretends to be wisdom incarnate, for whose oracle every one inquires, we should constantly move around the same spot, without gaining a single step. And so its followers having melted away, we do not find that men confident of their ability to shine in other sciences venture their reputation here, where everybody, however ignorant in other matters, presumes to deliver a final verdict, inasmuch as in this domain there is as yet no standard weight and measure to distinguish soundness from shallow talk.
It was definitely an easier reading experience than The Critique of Pure Reason, but still a difficult row to hoe throughout: it would also prove most helpful to the prospective philosophical explorer if she forearmed herself with a passable knowledge of the Kantian lexicon. The ways in which Kant expresses his proofs of Time and Space being pure forms of intuition strike me as brilliant—irrefutable to a plebhead such as myself, while his processed discursion upon how judgments of experience arise from a priori conceptual superadditions to judgments of perception, while somewhat tortuous, yet, in toto, elucidates his thought schema potently. I really do need to devour such as the appendix to Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation, that I might understand why the Critical Philosophy was fated to being considered such a knackered perspective in days like ours: it is my opinion that his Transcendental Idealism—in which objective legislation proves a participatory process involving both sides of that great, perduring, and confounding philosophic divide—is one of the more tenable thought schematics I've encountered, though admittedly dry as dust and lacking tangible tenterhooks sunk into such modern unearthing as that of the subconscious. Yet it sensibly endows the sensibly-derived with sole knowledgeable potential; smartly refutes the uber-scepticism of When-Empiricism-Attacks; promotes the individual as processor of encompassed reality whilst placing her within a universal framework of laws and forms; respects the conundrums and paradoxical sky-hooks of the infinite and absolute by admitting its potential whilst denying its sussing (though it is in this, I believe, that Schopey found the rot settling in); and sorts intangible and ephemeral cognitive processes into logically-derived and -defensible categories that were subsequently shoe-horned into fascinating aesthetic and moral mental loafers—all whilst keeping God's essence simultaneously alive and fully under the thumb of his mortal progenitors and, hence, well away from dangerous far-faring amongst the occluded thickets of any metaphysical wood.
That the Neo-Kantians have taken it to extremes, as seems the wont of all such en-prefixed progeny, fails to detract from the inspired way in which the originator separated the noumenal from the phenomenal once and for all within the parlous halls of knowing, while yet leaving room for the former to be potentially explored in non-epistemological manners and memes courtesy of the malachite bridges set down and forth to span those in-itself waters. Indeed, I always hold in mind the fact that Abraham Pais spoke of the great physicist Niels Bohr as being the natural successor to Kant, what with the latter's concept of complementarity, of a synthesis of reasoning mind with sensibly plenitudinous but transcendentally unknowable nature, meshing rather nicely in parts with the former's Copenhagen-backed postulation of Quantum Reality. Once again, it's little fault reflected upon Kant that so many have failed to heed the purely prudent (if unsettling) limits which he so carefully erected in the post-Enlightenment crush, what with reasonableness lacking the excitement and aesthetic soloing a world in flux importunely demands... -
I'm afraid I have to read the Critiques now.
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98% of all philosophers spend their professional lives bullshitting. What most people fail to appreciate about Kant is that he actually said things specific enough that they turned out to be wrong. Einstein was able to refute his claims about the nature of time and space and show they were incorrect.
How many other philosophers can say as much? Go Kant! -
Kant necessitated a paradigm shift in philosophy with the Prolegomena. Prior to Kant, philosophy sought to discover and ask questions about an objective world. Kant showed that it made no sense to talk about the world without also talking about a subject through whom it filtered. The forms of human intuition, and our own conceptual framework, rightfully entered philosophy. For anyone interested in the history of the discipline, this little text (as unnecessarily difficult as it can sometimes be) is a must. For anyone else, it will seem to be inscrutable nonsense.
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"Aga et inimvaim kunagi täielikult loobuks metafüüsikauurimustest, on niisama vähe tõenäoline nagu seegi, et kartusel hingata sisse saastunud õhku lakkaksime me kunagi täielikult hingamast." (lk 148)
"Kui ma ütlen, et me oleme sunnitud vaatlema maailma nii, just nagu [als ob] oleks ta mingi kõrgeima mõistuse ja kõrgeima tahte looming, siis ei ütle me tegelikult midagi rohkemat kui et: nii nagu kell on suhtes meistriga, laev ehitajaga, korraldus selle andjaga, nii on meeltemaailm (või kõik see, mis moodustab selle nähtumuste kogumi aluse) suhtes tundmatuga, mida me küll ei tunneta sellisena, nagu ta on iseeneses, küll aga sellisena, nagu ta on minu jaoks, ja nimelt suhtes maailmaga, mille osa ma olen." (lk 135) -
I'd started but not finished this supplementary polemic to the Critique of Pure Reason while working on my seminary thesis at the Hungarian Pastry Shop on 110th and Cathedral in New York City. Although some had recommended it as an easy approach to the critical project, time was short and I wanted to get through the three Critiques and all the Kant texts either cited by C.G. Jung or contained in his library at the time of his death first. I did so, then got back to this after graduation. It served as a nice little review of the critical programme.
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Kant starts off really well, seemingly chrushing skepticism, demolishing rationalism and empirism. But then...something happens...something terrifying...we end up in the marshlands of IDEALISM and we are sinking slowly while Kant promises us that he will save us with his metafysik. But he Kant.
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Kui mõistus on intellektuaalne pimesool ja traditsiooniline metafüüsika on pimesoolepõletik, siis Kant on kirurg, kes viib läbi transtsendentaalse operatsiooni.
Ühtlasi kõik teed viivad Kantini - sapere aude! -
Reading Kant is pretty interesting. The Prolegomena is doubtless a masterful work... Kant found a totally novel way of reconciling empirical, scientific concepts with an idealistic worldview. Granted, my own perspectives are pretty far from the transcendental idealist system that he proposes, but I have massive appreciation for his insights... recognizing the lens quality of space and time, for instance.
I should note that I don't, for a minute, buy transcendental idealism. He's willing to chalk a lot more up to the a priori side of things than me. And it feels lame to poo-poo Kant or any other august philosopher, but it's hard for me to really jibe with his approach. I somehow feel that I'm missing something because I'm not bowing down before his radiant genius. Deleuze wrote that he wanted to buttfuck Kant. I don't know that I share that sentiment, but hey, more power to you. -
"Debemos desechar la noción de que el espacio y el tiempo son en si auténticas cualidades de los objetos...todos los cuerpos, junto, con el espacio en que se hallan, deben considerarse meras representaciones presentes en nosotros, y que no existen sino en nuestros pensamientos"
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This is a book written after the publication of Kant's first critique, designed as a companion to it. Shorter and more accessible, the central aim of the book is to give metaphysicians pause and consider whether metaphysics is possible at all. It's goal is to convince the reader that precritical metaphysics is incoherent and in need of radical reform.
Kant begins with a brief discussion of metaphysics generally, attributing the most important event in its history to Hume's attack on it via his scepticism, which famously awoke Kant from his 'dogmatic slumber'.
Kant then proceeds to discuss the particular features of metaphysical cognition generally, before determining that it must be an apriori-synthetic cognition rooted in the pure understanding and reason. The concept of metaphysics implies its source cannot be empirical - it's principles can never be derived from experience as it must be metaphysical, not physical, knowledge. Therefore it cannot have its source in external experience (physics) or internal experience (psychology).
Kant starts his investigation proper by enquiring into how pure mathematics is possible. Pure mathematics is an example of apriori-synthetic cognition, and a good place to start to determine whether this classification is possible for metaphysics too. Mathematics is apriori because it's propositions are always necessary, and synthetic because it increases our knowledge of the subject. In the sum '7+5=12', the concept of 12 is not thought by merely thinking of the combination of 7 and 5. We must go beyond these concepts by using our intuition and we must add 5 units from our intuition to the concept of 7, hence we add something not previously contained within the concept and the proposition is synthetic.
In his investigations into pure mathematics, Kant determines that the only way our intuition can anticipate the actuality of the object and be a cognition apriori is if the intuition contains nothing but the form of sensibility, which precedes all actual sense impressions. Therefore, propositions of this form of sensuous intuition are only possible and valid for objects of the senses. Intuitions which are possible apriori can never concern anything other than the objects of the senses.
For Kant, the senses never know things in themselves, but only as appearances. This, according to Kant, is not idealism: he admits that objects exist outside of us, but that we know nothing of what they may be in themselves. Kant doesn't distinguish between primary and secondary qualities. Instead all the properties which constitute the intuition of a body belong merely to its appearance. Kant believe his doctrine of the ideality of space and time (that they exist only as projections by us the subject) actually safeguards reality from becoming illusion.
Kant makes it clear that his idealism concerns not the existence of things, but their sensuous representation - the word transcendental never means a reference of our cognition of things, but only to the faculty of cognition itself.
The second part of the book is concerned with how is pure natural science possible. 'Substance is permanent' is an example of a universal law of nature that subsists apriori. therefore, there exists a pure natural science, but how is this possible?
Here we are only concerned with experience and the universal conditions of its possibility which are given apriori. While all judgements of experience are empirical, not all empirical judgements are judgements of experience - special concepts must be superadded, concepts that have their origin apriori in the pure understanding, under which every perception must be subsumed and then changed into experience. Judgements of experience take their objective validity not from the immediate cognition of the object, but from the condition of the universal validity of empirical judgements, which comes from the pure understanding.
Kant then presents his table of categories, which he says are objectively and universally valid synthetic propositions. All synthetic principles, he declares, are nothing more than principles of possible experience. The possibility of experience in general is at the same time the universal law of nature, and the principles of experience are the very laws of nature.
Kant finally moves onto to the question at hand - how is metaphysics in general possible?
The objective validity and the truth or falsity of metaphysical assertions cannot be discovered or confirmed by experience. The representation of this problem for reason requires different concepts from the pure concepts of the understanding. The concepts of reason aim at the collective unity of all possible experience, and in doing so, go beyond every given experience and become transcendent.
The understanding requires categories for experience, whereas reason contains innately the ground of ideas, necessary concepts whose object cannot be given in experience. For metaphysics to be a science, we must distinguish between the pure concepts of reason, and the categories, whose use refers to experience. However, there must be a harmony between the nature of reason and the understanding: the former must contribute to the perfection of the latter. On this Kant says: 'Pure reason does not in its ideas point to particular objects beyond the field of experience, but only requires completeness of the use of the understanding in the complex of experience. But this is only a completeness of principles, not of intuitions and objects. Reason conceives the ideas in the fashion of the cognition of an object. This cognition is completely determined, but the object is only an idea invented for the purpose of bringing the cognition of the understanding as near as possible to the completeness indicated by the idea'
Kant also discusses his famous antinomies, derived from the nature of human reason. These are made up of pairs of contradictory statements, both validly deduced from reason. These are: 'The world has a beginning - The world is infinite', 'Everything is constituted out of the simple - Everything is composite', ' There is freedom - No freedom, only nature' and 'There is a causal necessary being - Everything is contingent'. Kant argues that the first two antinomies are actually conceptually false in the same way the statements 'a square circle is round - a square circle is not round' are both false. These first two antinomies are called mathematical antinomies, because they are concerned with addition and division of the homogeneous. The latter two, dynamic antinomies, are presented as contradictory, but are actually compatible, according to Kant.
The transcendental ideas express the particular application of reason as a regulative principle of systematic unity in the use of the understanding. They point out the bounds of pure reason, and how to determine those bounds. Metaphysics in general is possible by ascending from the data of its actual use to the grounds of its possibility. For metaphysics to be considered a science, it must first exhibit the whole stock of apriori concepts, their division according to source, analysis of the concepts, the possibility of synthetic cognition apriori by means of deduction of these concepts and their principles and bounds in one complete system.
This is a fantastic book for people interested in metaphysics. It presents a thorough and decisive attack on precritical metaphysics, and is a real watershed moment in the history of philosophy. I would recommend this as an introductory work to the Kantian project. -
A brief synopsis of Kant's Copernican Revolution provided by the monk from Königsberg himself. I am still not exactly sure how synthetic a priori cognitions, and hence a scientific metaphysics, are possible, but I'll leave all doubts for the first Critique itself. The Prolegomena is immensely helpful for figuring out what motivates Kant's monumental task, and how sharply does he differ from pre-Kantian modern philosophy.
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now i'm inspired to actually read the Critique. thank you based kant
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I don't get Kant, and I've never derived any pleasure from reading him.
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In summary: I'm not a fan. I Kant even pretend I enjoyed this.
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Changed the game for good.
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Se há livros difíceis na história da Filosofia são as três Críticas de Immanuel Kant. A mais importante de entre elas é provavelmente a Crítica da Razão Pura, na qual, discutindo os limites do conhecimento e as condições de sua possibilidade, Kant lança as bases para sua Filosofia Crítica, também chamado de Idealismo Transcendental.
Felizmente, para quem quer se introduzir nesse mundo e, talvez, ler a obra, Kant teve a delicadeza de lançar um resumo desse livro, intitulado Prolegômenos a qualquer metafísica futura que possa apresentar-se como ciência, de 1783. O objetivo do livro não é só esse, obviamente. Depois da publicação da Crítica da Razão Pura, em 1781, Kant percebe que alguns argumentos, por serem muito prolixos (como por exemplo a discussão da dedução dos conceitos do entendimento e dos paralogismos da razão pura), mais causavam erros do que compreensão no leitor. Enquanto não podia preparar uma nova edição alterada da Crítica (publicada somente em 1787), ele publicou os Prolegômenos, um livro muito menor e muito mais acessível que qualquer das duas edições da Crítica da Razão Pura.
Neste livro, Kant parte diretamente das três perguntas pressupostas na Crítica da Razão Pura: Como é possível a Matemática (tema da Estética Transcendental na Crítica), Como é possível a Física (tema da Analítica Transcendental) e Como (ou, talvez, se) é possível a Metafísica? As duas primeiras questões recebem uma resposta positiva de Kant: A Matemática é possível porque a sensibilidade possui intuições puras a priori, o espaço e o tempo, que fazem parte do sujeito, e não do mundo. Em outros termos, antes de conhecer objetos físicos a sensibilidade já está disposta a percebe-los através do espaço e do tempo, que não são propriedades das coisas em si mesmas, mas do modo como a sensibilidade percebe os fenômenos (argumento que, em um certo sentido, remonta a Santo Agostinho e a Descartes. Uma interessante prova apresentada na Metafísica é o experimento mental da mão espelhada - § 13). A Física é possível porque também o entendimento possui categorias a priori, como a própria causalidade (que liga temporalmente dois eventos entre si). Mas não podemos conhecer a coisa-em-si, o noumenon, mas apenas o modo como ela se apresenta em nossa experiência, o fenômeno. Os juízos sintéticos a priori que formulamos (ou seja, juízos que ligam por meio da razão, e não da sensibilidade, um predicado a um sujeito que não estão implicitamente contidos um no outro) nas leis científicas que elaboramos são descrições dos fenômenos, ou seja, do modo como se apresentam para nós. E é aqui que começam os problemas da Metafísica, que quer conhecer não os fenômenos (como a Física e a Matemática), mas a coisa-em-si (eu poderia dizer que a coisa-em-si é Deus, mas como poderia de fato dizê-lo, se não conhecemos a coisa em si?).
Somente o que se dá na experiência (é o que decorre dos argumentos anteriores) pode ser de fato conhecido, e, ainda que nossa Razão seja tendente a procurar conhecer a coisa-em-si, as ideias que formula não podem ser preenchidas pela intuição ou relacionadas pelas categorias, e permanecem sempre duvidosas ou, em termos kantianos, dialéticas. A metafísica, portanto, até hoje, não foi possível, porque nela a razão abandona sua natureza regulativa e pretende assumir uma natureza constitutiva, que, apesar de legítima, não encontra apoio na experiência, limite de todo conhecimento.
Kant não diz que a Metafísica não seja possível (e portanto as questões sobre a existência de Deus, a imortalidade da alma, e a eternidade do mundo, que são dialéticas, ou seja, tanto elas como as ideias opostas podem ser provadas ao mesmo tempo falsas ou verdadeiras), mas que ainda não temos condições de criar tal ciência. A única ideia que encontrará uma resposta positiva (e que já foi tratada na Crítica da Razão Pura, e também o será tratada na Fundamentação da Metafísica dos Costumes e na Crítica da Razão Prática) é a ideia dialética de que o homem é livre. Essa ideia é dialética porque o homem pode ser concebido ao mesmo tempo como livre e como submetido a leis (esse é o fundamento do conceito kantiano de autonomia). Isso é possível se o homem for concebido ao mesmo tempo como legislador (e portanto como coisa-em-si, ser numênico) e como súdito da legislação moral (e portanto como fenomênico). No campo da moral, pensa Kant, nós podemos conhecer a coisa-em-si porque a legislação não é externa (o que exigiria, para conhece-la, a experiência e os problemas que dela decorrem), mas interna à razão (e portanto conhecida sem a necessidade de uma estética transcendental).
Essa nova tradução em português, realizada por José Oscar de Almeidas Marques, é muito boa, e pareceu-me mais clara que as traduções anteriores (de Tânia Maria Bernkopf e de Artur Morão). O tradutor explica no início a preferência por alguns termos em sua tradução, mas ainda sentimos falta de notas explicativas ao texto de Kant, e sobretudo de uma introdução mais detalhada que parafraseie o texto de Kant de modo mais acessível ao leitor iniciante. -
Kant se propuso en Crítica de la Razón Pura una tarea enorme: fundamentar el conocimiento humano, examinar sus límites y valorar si la metafísica es posible y cómo se podría constituir como una ciencia. Para ello se sirvió de una terminología personal muchas veces ambigua (ya que trascendental y trascendente son cosas muy diferentes, o alma y Dios significan cosas muy diferentes a lo que normalmente pensamos al usar esos conceptos). Es un libro obtuso, extenso y oscuro, por lo que gozó de poca atención al principio, lo que resultó en que Kant decidiese escribir otro libro para clarificar qué es lo que quería decir y por qué es importante: Prologómenos.
Prologómenos se debe entender como un libro introductorio que debe acompañar (y no sustituir) a la Crítica, y repasa las tres partes principales de esta:
-Estética trascendental, que trata sobre de qué manera percibimos los fenómenos
-Analítica trascendental: de qué manera interpretamos los fenómenos para dar lugar a conocimiento
-Dialéctica trascendental: de qué manera opera la razón pura, es decir, la razón sin ayuda de objetos empíricos, para fundamentar una posible ciencia metafísica.
En ellas realiza su célebre separación entre fenómeno y noúmeno, siendo lo primero las percepciones sensibles de lo segundo, que son las cosas en sí. La idea más relevante de la obra de Kant es muy sencilla: conocemos el mundo (los fenómenos) de la manera que nuestras facultades nos lo permiten. Nuestras facultades (percepción + interpretación de los fenómenos) son las que dan lugar a la experiencia y el conocimiento objetivo. A través de esto Kant fundamenta la objetividad de las ciencias puras: la matemática y la física. Puesto que sólo conocemos de la manera que nuestras intuiciones y construcciones cognitivas nos lo permiten (son las gafas a través de las cuales vemos el mundo), y nuestras matemáticas se crean sobre esta base, las matemáticas necesariamente se corresponden con aquello que podemos experimentar: «El entendimiento no extrae sus leyes (a priori) de la naturaleza, sino que se las prescribe a ella». De esta manera, Kant busca separarse del escepticismo (pues crea una vía para el conocimiento fenomenológico objetivo) y del idealismo dogmático (ya que los noúmenos existen independientemente de la experiencia humana).
Sin embargo, hay muchas preguntas sin resolver. Kant no explica por qué la clasificación de formas en las que interpretamos los fenómenos para dar conocimiento (los conceptos del entendimiento) son las que son, ni por qué es una clasificación completa, ni por qué son fijas en cada persona y a lo largo del tiempo. Tampoco explica por qué llegamos a conclusiones erróneas o diferentes si nuestro entendimiento es el mismo, ni por qué se consideran muchas intuiciones como conceptos a priori del entendimiento.
Es en la última parte, que resume la Dialéctica trascendental, cuando el libro pierde gran parte de su brillo y lucidez. Afirma sin justificar que la razón pura (aquella que supuestamente opera al margen de la experiencia) se tiene que servir de silogismos como método, que esta sirve para delimitar el conocimiento empírico posible y, que en su frontera podemos atisbar qué no puede ser conocido, los noúmenos. A pesar de que Kant deja claro en toda la obra que los noúmenos no son cognoscibles, a través de extrapolación e inferencia del conocimiento empírico la razón pura es capaz de llegar a los conceptos de alma, libertad y Dios.
El primero, alma, significa "sujeto que no puede ser predicado de otra cosa", y que posee continuidad porque a lo largo de nuestra vida nos referimos al "yo" como sujeto continuamente. Sin embargo, no podemos afirmar que este alma permanezca tras la muerte, porque no se da en la experiencia. Kant no explica por qué este sujeto último no tiene trato especial al denominar humanos y no otros objetos.
Por otro lado, la libertad se la saca de la chistera inventándose causas incausadas provenientes de los noúmenos, que a su vez provocarían efectos en los fenómenos. No explica cómo operan estas causas incausadas, y si son incausadas y espontáneas, no explica si quiera cómo se le pueden asociar a sujeto alguno. Tampoco explica si esas causas incausadas se dan solo en los fenómenos provocados por humanos o si, por ejemplo, en una roca puede ocurrir fortuitamente una causa incausada.
La justificación de la existencia de algo llamado Dios (que significa "cosa que contiene toda la realidad, fundamento último de la existencia") es bochornosa, prácticamente inexistente: «Tenemos que pensar un mundo inteligible y un Ser supremo porque la razón sólo en estos encuentra la perfección y la satisfacción que nunca puede esperar de la derivación de los fenómenos» «el único camino posible para llevar hasta el máximo grado el uso de la razón con respecto a toda experiencia posible en el mundo sensible, es el admitir una razón suprema como causa de todas las cosas». Después utiliza la falacia del relojero, ya que si un reloj es complejo y ha sido creado por la razón humana, el mundo que es mucho más complejo ha tenido que ser creado por una razón superior.
A pesar de la decepción y falta de claridad y rigurosidad final, Prologómenos es un texto muy interesante y fundamental para entender el pensamiento kantiano. La influencia de esta filosofía es tan grande que solo por eso deberíamos leer este libro que, por otro lado, es interesante y estimulante en los dos primeros tercios. Esta influencia también alcanza las teorías científicas, y conceptos que él describe y desarrolla por primera vez en su obra son dados por sentado en la ciencia actual. En definitiva, es un gran ejercicio intelectual que ofrece una puerta para comprender autores posteriores que beben de él sin tener que leer la Crítica de la Razón Pura en su totalidad. -
“Philosophers usually think of their discipline as one which discusses perennial, eternal problems - problems which arise as soon as one reflects.” Thus Richard Rorty begins his tremendous masterpiece ‘Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature’, which is not the book I’m reviewing here(1). He(Rorty) goes on to critique/demolish this idea for 400-or-so pages, suggesting (in my mangled paraphrase) that instead we should think of philosophers (and, really, people in general) as creating particular technical vocabularies that are (hopefully) useful at solving spatiotemporally-local problems but that are at not to be evaluated as attempts at representing Universal Permanent Capital-T-Truth.
This is the sort of thing you have to consider before jumping into a book like Kant’s Prolegomena, or really anything that Kant wrote at all. Did he do something permanent and universal, speaking to all of humanity for all of eternity? Or, despite his repeated and emphatic claims(2), did he do something that was temporarily useful to a small handful of people and that’s only really interesting today to those who want to have something serious to say about the past?
The dude’s a nigh-universally(3) acknowledged master of creating a whole new technical vocabulary that revolutionised human meta-thinking, but so what? We’ve moved on - there’ve been loads of critiques(4), rebuttals, revisions, expansion-packs, and whatever else you want to call philosophical developments since Kant was alive and writing things down. So that seems to suggest that the only real reason to read this guy is to better frame contemporary technical debates, to understand the ‘historical origins’ of particular ideas, to basically map out the skeletal remains of old coral upon which our new generations of coral currently grow and thrive. We aren’t so much standing on the shoulders of giants as climbing ladders made from the dried bones of yesterday’s geniuses, and once we’ve climbed them to the top we can freely kick them away.
This way of looking at things is at least partially true w.r.t. this book - Kant cranks out his own definitions of familiar words and interrelates them and develops their implications and consequences, sometimes getting very detailed about it in ways that’d make it mind-numbing if you aren’t really intrinsically invested in what it is that he has to say. So that’s one strike against this book - unless you’re seriously dedicated to Philosophy-in-General or Philosophy-of-Mind or Intellectual-History then a good deal of this book will really suck to read.
But not all of it will suck. I think there’re some qualities of a human that come across in their work regardless of the actual content thereof. And Kant was a good thinker in many senses of the word; or, at least, in reading him I found myself identifying with him somehow. Put simply, I found myself liking the way that he thinks(5). Here’s where it gets kind of tricky to define, but the ‘way’ that he went about developing his ideas and explaining them to people seems mostly-admirable and appealing to me. As mentioned above it can get kind of tediously into-the-weeds as he tries to make damn-sure that none of his ideas have holes in them, but I suppose it’s also not fair to knock the guy for trying to be thorough.
This, I think, is critical to note. The Canon(6) is not holy-writ, handed down from high with humans as vacant mouthpieces and scribes - they were written by and for living breathing feeling suffering human beings. Immanuel Kant took shits, got erections(7), fell ill, maybe even got sad every once in awhile. He achieved something powerful and profound and we’ve more or less moved on, but he got as close to intellectual mortality as any of us can really hope for. This makes him worthy of study, in my mind - he had a unique way of having new and powerful ideas, and anybody who also would like to have new and powerful ideas would do well to share their mind with him for a time.
MAJOR MARGINALIA
(1) ‘Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature’ is also the title of a DFW short story in his collection Oblivion, which made my mind explode when I first saw it (I love it when my favorite authors comment on / mess with each other). The story itself was both very good and(1.1) not as immediately Rortian as I’d’ve hoped, but that could’ve just been DFW playing a private trick on me. Ah well.
(1.1) I think most people today’d phrase this sentence as “The story itself was very good but not as...”, which while maybe intuitively appealing deserves to be fought against. That is to say I don’t think the non-Rortian nature of the DFW piece detracted from its quality in any way, which is kind of implied by the use of the less-friendly conjunction ‘but’. ‘And’ just plain and simply deserves much more use, IMO.
(2) He comes across as a little insecure about his accomplishments, repeatedly saying what amounts to “I DID THIS THING, THIS THING WAS A GOOD AND IMPORTANT THING, YOU NEED TO RECOGNIZE THAT I DID THIS GOOD AND IMPORTANT THING”, etc. From what I’ve read up on it seems like some of his mature work wasn’t really well received at first and this pissed him off and as such the Prolegomena stands as a sort of response to his critics.
(3) Metaphorically speaking.
(4) … and not in the Kantian sense - Kant used ‘Critique’ to denote a judicious and fair and thorough assessment of the powers and limits of some topic, his chosen topics being Pure Reason and Practical Reason and Judgement and whatnot. Here I mean Critique in the sense of just sort of full-on tearing an idea down.
(5) Note the present tense - I loosely think of reading as temporarily thinking the thoughts of another person, in a limited sense. My favorite books are those where I sort of keep thinking the thoughts of the author even when I’m not immediately reading their words, where their descriptions and analyses start spontaneously applying themselves to my own thoughts and experiences(5.1). It’s how I grow, really.
(5.1) VN, RR, and DFW do this to me all the time.
(6) Here conceived as books that have achieved a sort of self-sustaining historical force, not as those books that literally speak to the problems of every human being ever. The latter set of books doesn't exist.
(7) Presumably, anyway. The guy was raised in a crazy-austere Pietist family and he never married, so I might be totally off the mark attributing to him such twitches of the intimate anatomy. -
The Prolegomena by Kant functions as a summarised and simplified version of the Critique of Pure Reason. Having realized the difficulty of understanding CPR, Kant thought it helpful to produce a more accessible work. I think he succeeded, the book lays out a rough outline of his metaphysical project, and offers some answers to common objections. Having read CPR once, I found it helpful to be explained by Kant himself in a somewhat more approachable language.
Kant set out to shed light on a rather fundamental question: Does knowledge derive from our senses (Hume), or, does it derive from rational reasoning (Descartes)? As far as I understand, Kant was the first philosopher who provided a systematic synthesis of these positions. Kant lays out, in a rigorous manner, exactly how and why these two domains of knowledge interact. In his view, the world as it exists in itself is not directly graspable to us, we are by necessity only percieving it as it appears to our sensibility. This includes time and space, which he concieves of as "pure forms of human intuition contributed by our own faculty of sensibility", which are a priori conditions for how objects appears to us at all. If you are struggling with the dichotomy of realism (the world is there, don't you see it?) and idealism (mind is the only reality, the world is an illusion!) - this book might be of help.
These ideas might sound strange when you first encounter them. However, if you want to read Kant, I suggest reading the Prolegomena before delving into the CPR. Would likely be beneficial to read his short essay "What Is Enlightenment?" first, to be familiar with the man behind the pen. -
I'm giving Kant 4 stars purely for his genius and breath of understanding in so many topics. What I can say is I finished this long, arduous book. Did I understand it? Uh, no. I'm going to have to turn to commentaries on Kant and reread this thing to claim I understand Kant.
I mean, I grasp that he was seeking to find pure reason, that is, reason out side of experience, that which is attained a priori. Do I comprehend his arguments how he can justify the many examples he gives of pure reason? Nope! The journey to understand Kant continues. -
An almost readable dumbed down version of the Critique of Pure Reason which is more like a synopsis to it.
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This is without a doubt the best place to begin with Kant—if you'd ever wish to do such a thing. Read for a Kant seminar I'm taking at the University of Missouri-St. Louis
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While I was reading this next to the critique of pure reason, I was asking myself if this book is not better than the critique. It is more concise, readable and while not all encompassing it portays its most important ideas. It was a fantastic read.
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"Mathematics, natural science, laws, arts, even morality, etc do not completely fill the soul; there is always a space left over, reserved for pure and speculative reason, the vacuity of which prompts us to seek vagaries, buffooneries, and mysticism for what seems to be employment and entertainment,"
It seems that Kant has forgot Jesus Christ
>uhh, he said buffooneries :^3
No, he forget Jesus Christ. -
Okay, I have what I'd like to call 'the Prolegomena Paradox' as to what to read first, the Prolegomena which is meant to explain the Critique, or read the Critique, then the Prolegomena, and maybe the Critique once again. See the problem. Anyway, I have made the choice of reading this first, of course without full comprehension of the Critique, I am a bit puzzled and confused.
One of the simple points in the book is the assertion that metaphysics cannot be empirical. For the cognition, as Kant puts it, is supposed to be not physical but metaphysical i.e. lying beyond experience. The following is interesting, it states that metaphysics should be based upon neither outer experience (physics proper), nor inner which provides the foundation of empirical foundation. And consequently it is cognition a priori, or from pure understanding and pure reason.
Intuition should not represent things as they are in themselves or else it wouldn't be called a priori. So the only solution, is that the priori cognition contains only a form of sensibility of a given object/thing. YET, everything given as object in intuition. But, intuition happens only through senses. And thus, understanding intuits nothing, but only reflects. Now comes the tricky part, Kant says that all bodies in space exist as nothing but representations in to us and exist only in our thoughts. And that is plain Idealism. Though he responds by saying that the things given to us as objects to our senses, 'we know nothing of them as they may be in themselves, but are acquainted only with their appearances...'
At the middle of the book, he verges on coming with a solution to the Humean problem, which is an interesting and out of the box approach. I cannot comment on it for the moment. Anyway, If it wasn't for Hume, Kant wouldn't have written all of this. Thanks Hume. -
يقدم كانط في هذا الكتاب مقدمة مختصرة أقل تعقيدًا وأكثر إمتاعًا لمشروعه الفلسفي "نقد العقل المحض".
بدأ كانط ثورته في كتابه العمدة «نقد العقل الخالص» حيث فحص العقل واستنبط قواعده، ومنها حاول إرساء قواعد لميتافيزيقا علمية يمكن أن تتقدم في سيرها كباقي العلوم بعد أن ظلت الفلسفة تهرول في المكان لقرون بدون أن تتقدم خطوة واحدة، ثم اختصر فلسفته النقدية في كتاب «مقدمة لكل ميتافيزيقا مقبلة يمكن أن تصير علمًا» ليُمكِّن القارئ من أن يرى النقطة الأساسية في لمحة واحدة. وفي الكتابين قال إن العالم في ذاته مجهول لنا، كل ما نعرفه عنه هو الظواهر التي نختبرها، وتلك الظواهر وإن كان مصدرها العالم الخارجي إلا إن صورتها هي نتاج لعقلنا نحن وليس للعالم، فالعقل يحتوي فطريًا على مجموعة من القواعد السابقة عن أي تجربة والتي تجعل التجربة ممكنة، ونحن حين نعرف أي شيء عن العالم بالتجربة فإن العقل يصبغ تجربتنا وفقًا لقواعده، كأنه يضع «فلتر» على الطبيعة فنراها في صورة القواعد العقلية.
أي أن المبادئ الأساسية للطبيعة (كالسببية أو حتى الزمان والمكان) هي في الحقيقة قواعد العقل لا الطبيعة، لكنه يوافق التجريبيين في اعتقادهم أن قواعد العقل تلك صالحة للاستخدام فقط في نطاق التجربة، وأي محاولة لتطبيقها على الميتافيزيقا وما وراء التجربة ستنتج معرفة مشكوك في صدقها.
أقام كانط فلسفته بناءً على قدرة العقل على إنشاء معرفة تركيبية قبلية (أي سابقة على أي تجربة، مستمدة من العقل نفسه لا من العالم الخارجي) حقيقية (أي تنطبق دومًا على الواقع)، وأثبت تلك القدرة بقوله بتركيبية الرياضيات.
أحاول في مقالي على كتب مملة إعادة النظر في تلك الإدعاءات عن تركيبية الرياضيات في ضوء التطورات الحديثة في الرياضيات والفيزياء، وأستغل الفرصة للحديث عن أسس الرياضيات الحديثة وأزمتها. ثم أحاول استعادة أسس فلسفة كانط -أو ما يمكن استعادتها منها بعد التطورات العلمية والرياضية- من خلال اكتشاف أهمية الخيال في فلسفته، وأجادل بأنه لن يصمد أيضًا.
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