Pure Reason- deKanted

Don’t delay in reading the material; it may take 2-hours, if properly cogitated and digested!

Kant sets a very high bar – keeping our reason pure, i.e. uncontaminated!

Pure speculative reason is an organic structure in which there is nothing isolated or independent, but every single part is essential to all the rest; and hence, the slightest imperfection, whether defect or positive error, could not fail to betray itself in use.

In his introduction to The Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel suggests that to understand a philosopher, a student ought to read the author’s Preface & Introduction, and then read some third-party book reviews. Although, for his own work (notoriously the most difficult to “read”) he recommends many slow, thorough and engaged readings. Typical philosopher – one rule for them and another for everyone else!

Without asking you to read a 1,000-page book, or even a 100-page summary, it would be impossible to “do justice” to any of the great works of philosophy; let alone fit it into our regular short window of discussion. However, if we follow Hegel’s advice, and stick to the Preface, and a little of the Introduction, we ought to have sufficient material to debate several assertions and assumptions, as well as the method of argument and application of logic, used by any philosopher. We will also gain a pretty good overview of the intent of whatever publication we choose. So, this is what we will attempt with Kant, and his Critique of Pure Reason. [ for this, I have used my copy, a translation by J. M. D. Meiklejohn, 1855 and published by Rebirth Publishing, 2025; printed by Amazon. BTW, the whole book is available free to download, in pdf form, from https://lawblogsa.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/critique-pure-reason-kant.pdf ].

Kant’s writing style is relatively friendly, even if his arguments are not easy to comprehend; but the areas he addresses in his inquiries are areas we have frequently covered in other discussions; in fact, Kant is often quoted by us when challenging or defending a point. So, we can find out whether we know what we’re talking about; or, do we talk a load of kant?

Finespun arguments in favour of useful truths make just as little impression on the public mind as the equally subtle objections brought against these truths.

Kant himself was keen to achieve “clarity” in his work and he believed that the reader has a right to demand ‘discursive or logical clearness on the basis of conceptions’, and also to demand ‘intuitive or aesthetic clearness by examples or other modes of illustration in concreto.’ But he admitted that he had no need to increase the size of his book by providing such concrete examples, because, although these would be helpful to the common reader, his book was not intended for ’popular use.’ He points out that Abbe Terrasson remarks with great justice that ‘if we estimate the size of a work, not from the number of its pages, but from the time which we require to make ourselves master of it, it may be said of many a book that it would be much shorter, if it were not so short! On the other hand, as regards the comprehensibility of a system of speculative cognition, connected under a single principle, we may say with equal justice: many a book would have been much clearer, if it had not been intended to be so very clear.’

I think I agree with Terrasson, and can call to mind several examples of books and authors that fail on both counts (including Kant!). Examples and metaphors are all well and good, but bear in mind that “we” tend to get caught-up in the specific details of a metaphor, at the expense of the main intention! It is often easier to form an argument against illustrative concrete examples, rather than complicated ethereal speculations; and such diversions are often more fun.

Kant wrote his book – The Critique of Pure Reason – as a warning to philosophers to rein-in their speculations, and also to provide a scientific framework by which to conduct such speculations (of pure reason). This is succinctly stated in these excerpts from his Introduction:

’Instead of thus trying to build without a foundation, it is rather to be expected that we should long ago have put the question, how the understanding can arrive at these a priori cognitions, and what is the extent, validity, and worth which they may possess? One part of our pure knowledge, the science of mathematics, has been long firmly established, and thus leads us to form flattering expectations with regard to others, though these may be of quite a different nature. Besides, when we get beyond the bounds of experience, we are of course safe from opposition in that quarter; and the charm of widening the range of our knowledge is so great that, unless we are brought to a standstill by some evident contradiction, we hurry on undoubtingly in our course. This, however, may be avoided, if we are sufficiently cautious in the construction of our fictions, which are not the less fictions on that account.’

Pure Reason is the mental activity in which we juggle with objects that we could never possibly experience (observe objectively). Kant specifies God, Freedom (of Will), and Immortality as three of the most abused – especially in the field of metaphysics.

To participate in the discussion:
· download the document available via this Link:
· don’t choke on it – focus on the areas that interest you the most,
· make your own notes, and
· bring your A-Game

The document includes:
· First two pages of Kant’s Introduction: these give an overview of his style, but also clarify some definitions, which are needed to read the Prefaces,
· First Preface, 1781: provides an account of why Kant wrote his Critique, and what its aims were,
· Second Preface, 1787: this contains the material that we will be mostly discussing.

I’ve added comments, notes and examples; and I’ve also cleaned-up (modernised) some of Kant’s language, and omitted passages that are not relevant to our discussion. However, the majority of the text is in his own words (translated of course).

Detailed Questions are embedded in the document, to ponder as you read.
Session Questions will be as follows:

Q.1: What do you think about Kant’s assertion that there are two pathways to knowledge: (1) through sensual experience and (2) by Reason, independent of experience? We can ignore the third way of gnosis/revelation – Kant would not approve!

Q.2: What are your views on Kant’s concept of a-priori knowledge (or truths)? How do these compare with ideas about God, the “Laws” of Nature and geometry?
Q.3a: Are you satisfied with Kant’s deductions that we can recognise an a-priori judgment (principle) if it contains within it both necessity and universality? And, do necessity and universality always go together? Can you think of an exemption?
Q.3b: Are Space, Substance and Time definitely proven as a-priori principles?

Q.4: Is Kant correct that science only advances when we pre-determine what we are going to look at, and look for, rather than just sit and passively observe? Is science only a system of “confirmation” and not discovery? What is it we need to “know” before we know something else?
Q.6 Do you change your mind to suit the objects you encounter (objects can be both phenomenal and purely mental), or, do you conform objects (view objects) in line with your mental conceptions?

Q.5: How do you judge Kant’s views on metaphysics (prior to his own method)?

Q.7: What do you think about Kant’s explanation of the negative and positive uses of speculative reason, and how he equates the negative with pointless metaphysics and the positive with scientific discovery?
(also Q.4) What do you think about his explanation of how we expand our knowledge-base through speculation-then-experience, and replace the transcendent knowledge-gaps that we produce (through speculation) with hard data?

Q.8: Are you able to reconcile Kant’s division of any object into two camps: one phenomenal and the other noumenal, and that in the former the object is not free, because it must obey the laws of nature, but in the latter it is free (in the mental speculative space!)?
How could this double-vision help us in a practical way?

Q.9: Must there always be subjects that remain outside the field of scientific examination and discovery, because as soon as we “examine” a transcendent object, it loses its transcendence by becoming a mere phenomenal object?

Q.10: What do you think about Kant’s three examples of “good old common sense” and that we ought to accept them rather then endlessly speculate about them?

Our criticism is the necessary preparation for a thoroughly scientific system
of metaphysics which must perform its task entirely a-priori, to the
complete satisfaction of speculative reason; not popularly, but scholastically.