Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
- Prolegomenon (plural "prolegomena") refers to any critical introduction or essay at the start of a book.
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics is one of the shorter works by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. It was published in 1783, two years after the first edition of his Critique of Pure Reason.
Prolegomena contains an overview and defense of the Critique‘s main conclusions, sometimes by arguments Kant had not used in the Critique. Kant characterizes his more accessible approach here as an "analytic" one, as opposed to the Critique‘s "synthetic" examination of successive faculties of the mind and their principles.
The book is also intended as a polemic. Kant was disappointed by the poor reception of the Critique of Pure Reason, and here he repeatedly emphasizes the importance of its critical project for the very existence of metaphysics as a science. The final appendix contains a detailed rebuttal to an unfavorable review of the Critique.
In the standard Akademie edition of Kant's works, the Prolegomena takes up part of Volume V.
External links
- Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, English translation by James Fieser, based on Paul Carus's 1902 translation
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