Chapter VIII: Preface: To the First Edition

Detailed discussion of the _Prefaces_ is not advisable. The problems which they raise can best be treated in the order in which they come up in the _Critique_ itself. I shall dwell only on the minor incidental difficulties of the text, and on those features in Kant’s exposition which are peculiar to the _Prefaces_, or which seem helpful in the way of preliminary orientation. I shall first briefly restate the argument of the _Preface_ to the first edition, and then add the necessary comment.

Human reason is ineradicably metaphysical. It is haunted by questions which, though springing from its very nature, none the less transcend its powers. Such a principle, for instance, as that of causality, in carrying us to more and more remote conditions, forces us to realise that by such regress our questions can never be answered. However far we recede in time, and however far we proceed in space, we are still no nearer to a final answer to our initial problems, and are therefore compelled to take refuge in postulates of a different kind, such, for instance, as that there must be a first unconditioned cause from which the empirical series of causes and effects starts, or that space is capable of existing as a completed whole. But these assumptions plunge reason in darkness and involve it in contradictions. They are the sources of all the troubles of the warring schools. Error lies somewhere concealed in them--the more thoroughly concealed that they surpass the limits of possible experience. Until such error has been detected and laid bare, metaphysical speculation must remain the idlest of all tasks.

In the latter part of the eighteenth century metaphysics had fallen, as Kant here states, into disrepute. The wonderful success with which the mathematical and natural sciences were being developed served only to emphasise by contrast the ineffectiveness of the metaphysical disciplines. Indifference to philosophy was the inevitable outcome, and was due, not to levity, but to the matured judgment of the age, which refused to be any longer put off with such pretended knowledge. But since the philosophical sciences aim at that knowledge which, if attainable, we should be least willing to dispense with, the failure of philosophy is really a summons to reason to take up anew the most difficult of all its tasks. It must once and for all determine either the possibility or the impossibility of metaphysics. It must establish

“...a tribunal which will assure to reason its lawful claims, and
which will also be able to dismiss all groundless pretensions, not
by despotic decrees, but in accordance with its own eternal and
unalterable laws. This tribunal is no other than the _Critique of
Pure Reason_.”[76] “Our age is, in especial degree, the age of
criticism (_Kritik_), and to such criticism everything must submit.
Religion, through its sanctity, and law-giving, through its
majesty, may seek to exempt themselves from it. But they then
awaken just suspicion, and cannot claim the sincere respect which
reason accords only to that which has been able to sustain the test
of free and open examination.”[77]

As has already been emphasised in the preceding historical sketch, Kant had learnt to trust the use of reason, and was a rationalist by education, temperament, and conviction. He here classifies philosophies as dogmatic and sceptical; and under the latter rubric he includes all empirical systems. ‘Empiricism’ and ‘scepticism’ he interprets as practically synonymous terms. The defect of the dogmatists is that they have not critically examined their methods of procedure, and in the absence of an adequate distinction between appearance and reality have interpreted the latter in terms of the former. The defect of the empiricists and sceptics is that they have misrepresented the nature of the faculty of reason, ignoring its claims and misreading its functions, and accordingly have gone even further astray than their dogmatic opponents. All knowledge worthy of the name is _a priori_ knowledge. It possesses universality and necessity, and as such must rest on pure reason. Wherever there is science, there is an element of pure reason. Whether or not pure reason can also extend to the unconditioned is the question which decides the possibility of constructive metaphysics. This is what Kant means when he declares that the _Critique_ is a criticism of the power of reason, in respect of all knowledge after which it may strive independently of experience. Pure reason is the subject-matter of the enquiry; it is also the instrument through which the enquiry is made.[78] Nothing empirical or merely hypothetical has any place in it, either as subject-matter or as method of argument.

From this position Kant draws several important consequences. First, since pure reason means that faculty whereby we gain knowledge independently of all experience, it can be isolated and its whole nature exhaustively determined. Indeed pure reason (Kant seeks to prove) is so perfect a unity that if “its principle” should be found insufficient to the solution of a single one of all the questions which are presented to it by its own nature, we should be justified in forthwith rejecting it as also incompetent to answer with complete certainty any one of the other questions. In metaphysics it must be either all or nothing,[79] either final and complete certainty or else absolute failure.

“While I am saying this I can fancy that I detect in the face of
the reader an expression of indignation mingled with contempt at
pretensions seemingly so arrogant and vainglorious; and yet they
are incomparably more moderate than the claims of all those writers
who on the lines of the usual programme profess to prove the simple
nature of the soul or the necessity of a first beginning of the
world.”[80]

In so doing they pretend to define realities which lie beyond the limits of possible experience; the _Critique_ seeks only to deal with that faculty of reason which manifests itself to us within our own minds. Formal logic shows how completely and systematically the simple acts of reason can be enumerated. Aristotle created this science of logic complete at a stroke. Kant professes to have established an equally final metaphysics; and as logic is not a science proper, but rather a propaedeutic to all science, metaphysics, thus interpreted, is the only one of all the sciences which can immediately attain to such completeness.

“For it is nothing but the inventory of all our possessions through
pure reason, systematically arranged. In this field nothing can
escape us. What reason produces entirely out of itself cannot lie
concealed, but is brought to light by reason itself immediately the
common principle has been discovered.”[81]

Secondly, the _Critique_ also claims certainty. With the removal of everything empirical, and the reduction of its subject-matter to pure reason, all mere opinion or hypothesis is likewise eliminated. Probabilities or hypotheses can have no place in a _Critique of Pure Reason_.[82] Everything must be derived according to _a priori_ principles from pure conceptions in which there is no intermixture of experience or any special intuition.

* * * * *

This _Preface_ to the first edition, considered as introductory to the _Critique_, is misleading for two reasons. First, because in it Kant is preoccupied almost exclusively with the problems of metaphysics in the strict ontological sense, that is to say, with the problems of the _Dialectic_. The problems of the _Analytic_, which is the very heart of the _Critique_, are almost entirely ignored. They are, it is true, referred to in A x-xi, but the citation is quite externally intercalated; it receives no support or extension from the other parts of the _Preface_. This results in a second defect, namely, that Kant fails to indicate the more empirical features of his new Critical standpoint. Since ultimate reality is supersensuous, metaphysics, as above conceived, can have no instrument save pure reason. The subjects of its enquiry, God, freedom, and immortality, if they are to be known at all, can be determined only through _a priori_ speculation. This fact, fundamental and all-important for Kant, was completely ignored in the popular eclectic philosophies of the time. They professed to derive metaphysical conclusions from empirical evidence. They substituted, as Kant has pointed out,[83] “a physiology of the human understanding” for the Critical investigation of the claims of reason, and anthropology for ethics. They were blind to the dogmatism of which they are thereby guilty. They assumed those very points which most call for proof, namely, that reason is adequate to the solution of metaphysical problems, and that all existence is so fundamentally of one type that we can argue from the sensuous to the supersensuous, from appearance to reality. When they fell into difficulties, they pleaded the insufficiency of human reason, and yet were all the while unquestioningly relying upon it in the drawing of the most tremendous inferences. Such, for instance, are the assumptions which underlie Moses Mendelssohn’s contention that since animals as well as men agree in the apprehension of space, it must be believed to be absolutely real.[84] These assumptions also determine Priestley’s assertion that though every event has its cause, there is one causeless happening, namely, the creative act to which the existence of the world is due.[85] On such terms, metaphysics is too patently easy to be even plausible. “Indifference, doubt, and, in final issue, severe criticism, are truer signs of a profound habit of thought.”[86] The matter of experience affords no data for metaphysical inference. In the _a priori_ forms of experience, and there alone, can metaphysics hope to find a basis, if any basis is really discoverable.

This is Kant’s reason for so emphatically insisting that the problem of the _Critique_ is to determine “how much we can hope to achieve by reason, when all the material and assistance of experience is taken away.”[87] But in keeping only this one point in view Kant greatly misrepresents the problems and scope of the _Critique_. Throughout the _Preface_ he speaks the language of the _Aufklärung_. Even in the very act of limiting the scope of reason, he overstresses its powers, and omits reference to its empirical conditions. It is well to contrast this teaching with such a passage as the following:

“The position of all genuine idealists from the Eleatics to
Berkeley is contained in this formula: ‘All cognition through the
senses and experience is nothing but mere illusion, and only in the
ideas of pure understanding and Reason is there truth.’ The
fundamental principle ruling all my idealism, on the contrary, is
this: ‘All cognition of things solely from pure understanding or
pure Reason is nothing but mere illusion, and only in experience is
there truth.’”[88]

But that passage is equally inadequate as a complete expression of Kant’s Critical philosophy. The truth lies midway between it and the teaching of the _Preface_ to the first edition. Pure reason is as defective an instrument of knowledge as is factual experience. Though the primary aim of metaphysics is to determine our relation to the absolutely real, and though that can only be done by first determining the nature and possible scope of _a priori_ principles, such principles are found on investigation to possess only empirical validity. The central question of the _Critique_ thus becomes the problem of the validity of their empirical employment. The interrelation of these two problems, that of the _a priori_ and that of experience, and Kant’s attitude towards them, cannot be considered till later. The defects of the _Preface_ to the first edition are in part corrected by the extremely valuable _Preface_ substituted in the second edition. But some further points in this first _Preface_ must be considered.

=Prescribed by the very nature of reason itself.=[89]--Metaphysics exists as a “natural disposition,” and its questions are not therefore merely artificial.

“As natural disposition (_Naturanlage_) ... metaphysics is real.
For human reason, without being moved merely by the idle desire for
extent and variety of knowledge, proceeds impetuously, driven on
by an inward need, to questions such as cannot be answered by any
empirical employment of reason, or by principles thence derived.
Thus in all men, as soon as their reason has become ripe for
speculation, there has always existed and will always continue to
exist some kind of metaphysics.”[90]

Hence results what Kant entitles _transcendental illusion_.

“The cause of this transcendental illusion is that there are
fundamental rules and maxims for the employment of Reason,
subjectively regarded as a faculty of human knowledge, and that
these rules and maxims have all the appearance of being objective
principles. We take the subjective necessity of a connection of our
concepts, _i.e._ a connection necessitated for the advantage of the
understanding, for an objective necessity in the determination of
things in themselves. This is an illusion which can no more be
prevented than we can prevent the sea from appearing higher at the
horizon than at the shore, since we see it through higher light
rays; or to cite a still better example, than the astronomer can
prevent the moon from appearing larger at its rising, although he
is not deceived by this illusion.... There exists, then, a natural
and unavoidable dialectic of pure Reason, not one in which a
bungler might entangle himself through lack of knowledge, or one
which some sophist has artificially invented to confuse thinking
people, but one which is inseparable from human Reason, and which,
even after its deceiving power has been exposed, will not cease to
play tricks with it and continually to entrap it into momentary
aberrations that will ever and again call for correction.”[91]

=Dogmatism.=[92]--According to Kant there are three possible standpoints in philosophy--the dogmatic, the sceptical, and the critical. All preceding thinkers come under the first two heads. A dogmatist is one who assumes that human reason can comprehend ultimate reality, and who proceeds upon this assumption. He does not, before proceeding to construct a metaphysics, enquire whether it is possible. Dogmatism expresses itself (to borrow Vaihinger’s convenient mode of definition[93]) through three factors--_rationalism_, _realism_, and _transcendence_. Descartes and Leibniz are typical dogmatists. As rationalists they hold that it is possible to determine from pure _a priori_ principles the ultimate nature of God, of the soul, and of the material universe. They are realists in that they assert that by human thought the complete nature of objective reality can be determined. They also adopt the attitude of transcendence. Through pure thought they go out beyond the sensible and determine the supersensuous. Scepticism (Kant, as above stated,[94] regards it as being in effect equivalent to empiricism) may similarly be defined through the three terms, _empiricism_, _subjectivism_, _immanence_. A sceptic can never be a rationalist. He must reduce knowledge to sense-experience. For this reason also his knowledge is infected by subjective conditions; through sensation we cannot hope to determine the nature of the objectively real. This attitude is also that of immanence; knowledge is limited to the sphere of sense-experience. Criticism has similarly its three constitutive factors, _rationalism_, _subjectivism_, _immanence_. It agrees with dogmatism in maintaining that only through _a priori_ principles can true knowledge be obtained. Such knowledge is, however, subjective[95] in its origin, and for that reason it is also only of immanent application; knowledge is possible only in the sphere of sense-experience. Dogmatism claims that knowledge arises independently of experience and extends beyond it. Empiricism holds that knowledge arises out of sense-experience and is valid only within it. Criticism teaches that knowledge arises independently of particular experience but is valid only for experience.

The following passages in the _Methodology_ give Kant’s view of the historical and relative values of the two false methods:

“The sceptic is the taskmaster who constrains the dogmatic reasoner
to develop a sound critique of the understanding and reason. When
the latter has been made to advance thus far, he need fear no
further challenge, since he has learned to distinguish his real
possessions from that which lies entirely beyond them, and to which
he can therefore lay no claim.... Thus the sceptical procedure
cannot of itself yield any satisfying answer to the questions of
reason, but none the less it prepares the way by awakening its
circumspection, and by indicating the radical measures which are
adequate to secure it in its legitimate possessions.”[96] “The
first step in matters of pure reason, marking its infancy, is
_dogmatic_. The second step is _sceptical_, and indicates that
experience has rendered our judgment wiser and more circumspect.
But a third step, such as can be taken only by fully matured
judgment, is now necessary.... This is not the censorship but the
critique of reason, whereby not its present bounds but its
determinate [and necessary] limits, not its ignorance on this or
that point, but in regard to all possible questions of a certain
kind, are demonstrated from principles, and not merely arrived at
by way of conjecture. Scepticism is thus a resting-place for human
reason, where it can reflect upon its dogmatic wanderings and make
survey of the region in which it finds itself, so that for the
future it may be able to choose its path with more certainty. But
it is no dwelling-place for permanent settlement. That can be
obtained only through perfect certainty in our knowledge, alike of
the objects themselves and of the limits within which all our
knowledge of objects is enclosed.”[97]

=Locke.=[98]--Cf. A 86 = B 119; A 270 = B 327; B 127.

=On the unfavourable contrast between mathematics and metaphysics.=[99]--Cf. _Ueber die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze_ (1764), _erste Betrachtung_, and below, pp. 40, 563 ff.

=The age of criticism.=[100]--Kant considered himself as contributing to the further advance of the eighteenth century Enlightenment.[101] In view, however, of the contrast between eighteenth and nineteenth century thought, and of the real affiliations and ultimate consequences of Kant’s teaching, it seems truer to regard the Critical philosophy as at once completing and transcending the _Aufklärung_. Kant breaks with many of its most fundamental assumptions.

=The Critique of Pure Reason.=[102]--Kant here defines the _Critique_ as directed upon pure reason.[103] Further, it is a criticism of knowledge which is “independent of all experience,” or, as Kant adds “free from all experience.” Such phrases, in this context, really mean _transcendent_. The _Critique_ is here taken as being a Critical investigation of transcendent metaphysics, of its sources, scope, and limits.[104]

=Opinion or hypothesis not permissible.=[105]--Cf. below, p. 543 ff.

=I know no enquiries, etc.=[106]--The important questions raised by this paragraph are discussed below, p. 235 ff.

=Jean Terrasson= (1670-1750).[107]--The quotation is from his work posthumously published (1754), and translated from the French by Frau Gottsched under the title _Philosophie nach ihrem allgemeinen Einflusse auf alle Gegenstände des Geistes und der Sitten_ (1762). Terrasson is also referred to by Kant in his _Anthropologie_, §§ 44 and 77. Terrasson would seem to be the author of the _Traité de l’infini créé_ which has been falsely ascribed to Malebranche. I have translated this latter treatise in the _Philosophical Review_ (July 1905).

=Such a system of pure speculative reason.=[108]--The relation in which this system would stand to the _Critique_ is discussed below, pp. 71-2. Speculative does not with Kant mean transcendent, but merely theoretical as opposed to practical. Cf. B 25, A 15 = B 29, A 845 = B 873.

=Under the title: Metaphysics of Nature.=[109]--No such work, at least under this title, was ever completed by Kant. In the Kantian terminology “nature” signifies “all that is.” Cf. below, p. 580.