糖心Vlog

Mark Albert Selzer

*2nd Place Winner of the Prestigious Bassen Prize*

In this essay, I will interpret a passage of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason according to how I understand it. This interpretation will proceed by an analysis of key excerpts, in the order in which they have been written, followed by an analysis of the passage as a whole. It is my hope that my interpretation of the passage I have selected will help you understand Kant’s ideas in the passage, and more importantly, that my interpretation will show you how Kant’s writing can be understood.

The passage begins with Kant mentioning the advantages of examining the methods of mathematics and science:

The examples of mathematics and natural science, which by a single and sudden revolution have become what they now are, seem to me sufficiently remarkable to suggest our considering what may have been the essential features in the changed point of view by which they have so greatly benefited. Their success should incline us, at least by way of experience, to imitate their procedure, so far as the analogy which, as a species of rational knowledge, they bear to metaphysics may permit (Kant 22).

In this excerpt, Kant is praising the success of both mathematics and science, and suggesting that metaphysics emulate their methods. At the time Kant had written the Critique of Pure Reason, the scientific revolution had recently taken place. The famous works of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton had been written and had received wide attention during the two centuries preceding the first publication of the Critique of Pure Reason. What explains the great success of mathematics and science in this age? Kant considers mathematics and science as paradigm examples of successful critical inquiries because of their apparent uniformity in contrast to the widespread disagreement within metaphysics. Kant recognizes that the natural sciences, as well as mathematics and logic, have clearly defined their boundaries, while metaphysics has failed to do so. In other words, each of those disciplines determined what they could claim and on what basis they could justify their claims. For example, the scientific revolution revolutionized our ways of thinking about the physical world, namely, by emphasizing experimentation and empirical evidence. Instead of merely speculating on what might follow a particular event, scientific experimentation aims to recreate an event and observe what actually happens. The natural sciences defined their universe of discourse strictly to the physical world, and then further limited their claims about the physical world to only those claims justified by experimentation and empirical evidence. Since Kant is concerned with metaphysics, which is beyond physical observations, the importance of these ways of thinking is not their emphasis on experimentation or empirical evidence, but their emphasis on methodology. In other words, the project of defining the boundaries of any thought within a discipline is what matters to Kant. Thus, Kant advises us to consider the methods of mathematics and science, so that certain advantages of their methods can be applied to develop a unified and more successful method for metaphysics. Kant compares this project of “cleaning up” metaphysics to the Copernican revolution because Kant aims to eliminate unnecessary speculation within metaphysics, just as Copernicus eradicated unnecessary speculation within astronomy. A ridiculously complex system that required tedious calculations existed before Copernicus dramatically simplified the revolutions of the planets. He accomplished this feat by positing the planets as revolving around the Sun rather than the Earth. In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant aims to achieve an analogous simplification in metaphysics.

After setting his objective, Kant moves on to point out a grave error often committed by metaphysics:

Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects. But all attempts to extend our knowledge of objects by establishing something in regard to them a priori, by means of concepts, have, on this assumption ended in failure (Kant 22).

The key concept in this passage is the notion of a priori knowledge, which means to understand something independently of experience, by reason alone. However, before further discussing this passage, it is important to note that, to Kant, metaphysics i