Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T08:15:41.165Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Kant’s Copernican Turn and the Rationalist Tradition

from Part I - The Background to the Critique

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2010

Paul Guyer
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
Get access

Summary

The Critique of Pure Reason sets out to establish the sources, extent, and limits of a priori knowledge, with a view to ascertaining the prospects for metaphysics as a scientific enterprise. Kant defines a priori knowledge as knowledge that is “absolutely independent of all experience,” and distinguishes it from empirical knowledge, whose sources lie in experience (B 2-3). The Critique's second edition frames its overarching goal as a general solution to the problem: How are synthetic judgments a priori possible? (B 19) This formulation, intended to express the work's focus on the problem of non-trivial a priori knowledge of objects, presupposes two important doctrines. Kant holds that the knowledge constituting the proper end of metaphysics is never mere empirical knowledge, even when the object of investigation is empirical reality. He also insists that substantive knowledge of objects does not find expression in merely analytic judgments - those in which the predicate “does not add anything” to the subject concept, but merely “breaks up” this subject concept into components “already thought in it” (A 6-7/B 10-11). The Critique's epistemological investigation aims to “assure to reason its lawful claims, and dismiss all groundless pretensions, not by despotic decrees, but in accordance with reason's own eternal and unalterable laws” (A xi-xii). Kant employs “reason” in such contexts, in contrast to a narrower sense later introduced, as a general label for cognitive capacities underwriting a priori knowledge (A 11/B 24; A 305/B 363; A 323/B 380).

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×