Immanuel Kant Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics Second Edition and the Letter to Marcus Herz, February 1772 Translated, with Introduction and Notes, by James W. Ellington PROLEGOMENA Immanuel Kant PROLEGOMENA To Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Come Forward as Science with Kant’s Letter to Marcus Herz February 27, 1772 Second Edition The Paul Carus Translation extensively revised by James W. Ellington Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. Indianapolis/Cambridge Copyright © 1977 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. New material copyright © 2001 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 14 13 12 11 3 4 5 6 7 8 For further information, please address: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. P.O. Box 44937 Indianapolis, IN 46244-0937 www.hackettpublishing.com Cover design by Listenberger Design & Associates Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kant, Immanuel, 1724–1804. [Prolegomena. English] Prolegomena to any future metaphysics that will be able to come forward as science with Kant’s letter to Marcus Herz, February 27, 1772 : the Paul Carus translation / Immanuel Kant ; extensively rev. by James W. Ellington.—2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-87220-594-0—ISBN 0-8722-593-2 (paper) 1. Metaphysics. 2. Knowledge, Theory of. I. Ellington, James W. (James Wesley), 1927– . II. Title. B2787.E5 C3 2001 110—dc21 2001016882 ISBN-13: 978-0-87220-594-9 (cloth) ISBN-13: 978-0-87220-593-2 (pbk.) Adobe PDF ebook ISBN: 978-1-60384-453-6 CONTENTS Preface vii Introduction ix Selected Bibliography xvi Note on the Text xvii PROLEGOMENA TO ANY FUTURE METAPHYSICS Preface 1 Preamble on the Peculiarities of All Metaphysical Cognition 9 First Part of the Main Transcendental Question How Is Pure Mathematics Possible? 23 Second Part of the Main Transcendental Question How Is Pure Natural Science Possible? 35 Appendix to Pure Natural Science 60 Third Part of the Main Transcendental Question How Is Metaphysics in General Possible? 64 Conclusion On the Determination of the Bounds of Pure Reason 85 Solution of the General Question of the Prolegomena “How Is Metaphysics Possible as Science?” 99 Appendix On What Can Be Done to Make Metaphysics as a Science Actual 105 A Specimen of a Judgment about the Critique Prior to Its Examination 105 Proposals as to an Investigation of the Critique upon Which a Judgment May Follow 112 Supplement Kant’s Letter to Marcus Herz, February 21, 1772 117 German-English List of Terms 123 Index 129 PREFACE This edition of the Prolegomena includes a letter that Immanuel Kant wrote to his friend Marcus Herz in 1772, in which he points out that in his Inaugural Dissertation entitled On the Form and PrinciplesoftheSensibleandtheIntelligibleWorld(thathedelivered in 1770 and that procured for him a position at the University of Ko¨nigsberg) he had characterized intellectual representations (or rationalconcepts)merelynegatively:humanthoughtpossessescon- cepts not brought about by the objects that such concepts purport to present to the mind—that is, there are thoughts that are a priori (e.g.,ourmathematicalconcepts)andarenotaposteriori(orempiri- cal).Healsosaysthatheisreadytotakeanextstepthatwillpropel himintowhathecallstheCriticalPhilosophy.Thecruxofhisnew philosophy is this: What assurance do we have that our a priori (rational) thoughts have in reality a relation to objects that exist apart from us? And how is one to determine which of our rational thoughtsarerealandwhicharefictitious?Inthecaseofoursensible (a posteriori) thoughts regarding colors, odors, flavors, and so forth, thequestionastorealityisnoproblem;suchthoughtsareproduced by the action of external objects upon our awareness. But in the caseof ourrationalthinking, howismy intellectitself toconstitute entirely a priori concepts of things with which the things must necessarily agree? And how is the mind to lay out real principles regarding the possibility of things such that our experience must truly agree with these principles even though such principles are independent of immediate and particular sensations? Thesolutiontothiscrucialproblemdidnotcomeuntilthe1780s, whenKantpublishedtheCritiqueofPureReason.Thereheclaims that pure (rational) forms of thought synthesize (or make) valid experienceforusbycombiningsenseperceptionsintoarealwhole. Forexample,atB128–129hesaysthis:Thefunctionofthecategori- cal judgment is the relation of subject to predicate (S is P). In the judgment ‘All bodies are divisible’ there is no determination from theviewpointofpurelyformallogicastowhichofthetwoconcepts (‘bodies’ and ‘divisible’) is to be assigned the function of subject and which is to be assigned that of predicate, inasmuch as one mightalsosay‘Somethingdivisibleisabody’.Butwhentheconcept of body is brought under the category (pure concept) of substance, vii viii EDITOR’SPREFACE a determination is thereby made that the sense perception of the bodyinrealexperiencemustalwaysberegardedassubjectbutnever aspredicate.Inthiswaythepureconcept(category)of‘substance’(as form) determines how the parts (‘bodies’ and ‘divisible’) are to be combined(synthesized)intoawholeofcognition(objectiveknowl- edge).And,thus,aprioriformsofthoughtmakeobjectiveexperience oftheworldforus,butsenseperceptionsalonewithoutthesynthesiz- ingactivityofpureformsofthoughtdonotprovideuswithobjective experience of the world. Many readers of the Critique of Pure Reason (first published in 1781) found it to be a tough nut to crack (and many still do). To alleviate this situation to a degree, Kant wrote the Prolegomena to AnyFutureMetaphysics(publishedin1783).Thehopehereisthat readingthisworkwillprovidesomelightontheCriticalPhilosophy, which many consider to be one of the most profound systems ever to appear in the republic of letters. James W. Ellington University of Connecticut Storrs INTRODUCTION Kant’s philosophical excogitations culminated in three grand booksentitledCritiqueofPureReason,CritiqueofPracticalReason, and Critique of Judgment. The areas covered by these books corre- spondroughlytothoseareasdesignatedbyAristotleasthetheoretical, practical(moralandpolitical),andproductive(aesthetic).Allthree books are quite technical and difficult; but none of them “fell deadborn from the press,” as Hume said had been the fate of his grand book entitled A Treatise of Human Nature. To remedy this unfortunate state of affairs, Hume popularized the doctrines of his Treatise intwo otherbooks entitledAn InquiryConcerning Human UnderstandingandAnInquiryConcerningthePrinciplesofMorals. Kant did not exactly popularize his first two Critiques when he composed two shorter works entitled Prolegomena to Any Future MetaphysicsandGroundingfortheMetaphysicsofMorals,butthese booksdoserveasintroductionsofsortstothefirsttwocritiquesand are very likely the most widely read of all Kant’s works. TowardtheendofthePrefaceoftheProlegomena,Kantcautions that this work is properly a sequel to the Critique of Pure Reason, inasmuch as the former affords the reader a compact overall view of the latter and is written in a manner that makes the doctrines of the Critique more accessible than they are in the Critique itself. This is to say that in case a reading of the Critique has given one largely a view of the trees, a reading of the Prolegomena may help give one a view of the forest. In spite of Kant’s warning, much can be learned about the Kantian epistemology and metaphysics from a careful reading of the Prolegomena before one plunges into the intricaciesoftheCritiqueorevenifonenevertakesthatplungeatall. The Prolegomena is based on an analytical method of exposition whichproceedsregressivelyfromconditionedtocondition,whereas theCritiqueisbasedonasyntheticalmethodthatproceedsprogres- sivelyfromconditiontoconditioned. IntheProlegomenaonestarts withsomeuncontestedpureknowledge(e.g.,arithmeticandgeome- try)andneedsnotinquireastowhethersuchknowledgeispossible, since it is already actual, but needs to inquire only as to how such knowledge is possible (because time and space are given as pure intuitions). In other words, the apriority of time and space is estab- lished merely by the fact that arithmetic and geometry do already ix