Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — trans. F. Max Müller
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The translator’s English as printed (F. Max Müller). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
the concept As^ forejo^n predicate B, which nevertheless is beHeved to be connected with it ? It cannot be experience, because the proposition that all which happens has its cause represents this second predicate as added to the subject not only with greater generality than experience can ever supply, but also with a character of necessity, and therefore purely a jyrloid^^^wd based on concepts. All our speculative knowledge a i)riori^^vcc\^ at- and rp.<;ts nn sucji^ synthetical, i.e. expanding propositions, for [p. lo] the analytical are no doubt very important and necessary, yet only in order to arrive ?it fh^t clenrness of ^r>n/-<^pts which is requisite for a safe and wide synthesis, serving as a really new addition to what we possess already.
[We ^ have here a certain mystery^ before us, which must be cleared up before any advance into the unlimited field of a pure knowledge of the understanding can become safe and trustworthy. We must discover on the largest scale the ground of the possibility of synthetical judgments a priori ; we must understand the conditions which render every class of them possible, and endeavour not only to indicate in a sketchy outline, but to define in its fulness and practical completeness, the whole of that knowledge, which forms a class by itself, systematically arranged according to its original sources, its divisions, its extent and its limits. So much for the present with regard to the peculiar character of synthetical judgments.]
It will now be seen how there can be a special [p. 1 1]
1 This paragraph left out in the Second Edition, and replaced by Supplement VI.
2 If any of the ancients had ever thought of asking this question, this alone would have formed a powerful barrier against all systems of pure reason to the present day, and would have saved many vain attempts undertaken blindly and without a true knowledge of the subject in hand.
Introduction 9
science serving as a critique of pure reason. [Every! kind of knowledge is called pure, if not mixed with any-1 thing heterogeneous. But more particularly is that know- 1 ledge called absolutely pure, which is not mixed up with \ any experien££_Q]i_sj£iisatLon, and is therefore possible en- \ix€iy_a.^r-wri.'\ ^g^ason is the faculty which supplies the principles of knowledge a priori. £ui.£_reason therefore is that faculty which supplies the principles of knowinj anything entirely a...p^ri. An Organum of pure reason ought to comprehend all the principles by which pure knowledge a priori can be acquired and fully established. A complete application of such an Organum would give us a System of Pure Reason. But as that would be a difficult task, and as at present it is still doubtful whether and when such an expansion of our knowledge is here possible, we may look on a mer£_j:nitiGism.-oL pure_reason, its sources and limits, as a kind of preparation J^or a rom-^ plete, system of purejxagon. It should be called a critique, not a doctrine, of pure reason. Its usefulness would be negative only, serving for a purging rather thajn^ f or an expansioji _Q£-Our_ reason, and, what after all is a considerable gain, guarding reason against errors.
I call all knowledge transcf^ndf^ntal which is occupied not so much witbL. objects, as with nnr n prip^j rnnrppt-Q xa-f-ebj£icts^ A system of siich concepts might be [p. 12] called Transcendental Philosophv. But for the present this is again too great an undertaking. We should have to treat therein completely both of analytical knowledge, and of synthetical knowlc^g^ n prinn\ which is more than we intend to do, being satisfied to carry on the analysis so
1 'As with our manner of knowing objects, so far as this is meant to be possible a priori^ Second Edition.
10 Introduction
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