Metaphysics: The Battleground

All right, let’s do this.

In this first section of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, we find two Prefaces: that of the First Edition, and that of the Second Edition. I’ll follow the popular current and refer to them as Edition A and B, respectively.

Preface A and Preface B represent very different writing styles of Kant. Preface A is a tangle-free nine pages of analysis. Preface B is considerably longer and wordier, and as such does a great job at explaining Kant’s overarching goal in this work: To offer a critique of pure reason.

Kant asserts that Metaphysics is an unstable sort of science, because utilizing its principles causes Reason to miss its mark time and again. Kant states that in metaphysics, “reason continuously gets stuck, even when it claims a priori insight (as it pretends) into those laws confirmed by the commonest experience.” (Critique of Pure Reason, 109 / Bxiv) Kant goes on to suggest that we must shift our approach in thinking about objects in metaphysics. He asserts that instead of assuming that our knowledge must conform to objects, we should consider that objects may need to conform to our knowledge, which is better aligned with the concept of a priori cognition. He likens this concept to the “first thoughts of Copernicus who, when he did not make good progress in the explanation of the celestial motions if he assumed that the entire celestial host revolves around the observer, tried to see if he might not have greater success if he made the observer revolve and left the stars at rest.” (Critique, 110 / Bxvi)

Mindblowing, no? So what Kant wants to do is free us of the thinking that we cannot have knowledge outside of experience. And rightfully so, since a priori knowledge is (to Kant) infeasible without the ability to intuit an object before being presented with it. In essence, the Critique is not intended to devise (or implement) a new approach to the realm of speculative reason, but rather, to evaluate the current approach—that is, the view that in reasoning, we must not extent ourselves beyond the limits of experience. Kant suggests that in extending ourselves in this way, we are actually creating more limits (by discovering contradictions in reason), not relieving them (Critique, 110).

The Prefaces to the Critique are full of great nuggets of wisdom, but I felt this to be a major contemplation in these pages. This helps to lay the groundwork for the entire argument he will present in the rest of the Critique, and employs carefully-selected language in order to make the point.