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Kant's Critical Philosophy for English Readers
Kant's Critical Philosophy for English Readers Author:Immanuel Kant Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The Two Aspects of the Deduction. objects of the pure understanding, and is intended to explain the objective validity of its a priori concepts concerning the... more »m. This is an essential part of Kant's plan, since it shows what the understanding and the reason can know, apart from all experience. It stands upon a basis perfectly independent of the second side of the deduction, which considers the understanding subjectively, and endeavours to analyse its faculties. ' As the question, How is the faculty of thought itself possible ? can only be answered by inferring a cause from its effects, my solution,' says Kant, ' may seem (though this is not really the case) to be a mere hypothesis, and the reader may think himself at liberty to differ from me.' But this will not invalidate the former side of the argument. 1 As to clearness, the reader has a right to expect logical clearness in the arguments, which has been carefully attended to, and also aesthetical and intuitive clearness, by means of sufficient examples and illustrations. The length and intricacy of the discussion have compelled the author to dispense with these to an extent he did not originally intend. A general survey of a system is often impeded by these illustrations, and ' many a book would have been far clearer if the author had not endeavoured to make it so clear? 1 The reader should bear in mind that this passage refers to the First Edition of the Critick. chapter{Section 48 Reflections on the First Preface. Metaphysic is the only science, as we shall show, which is capable of absolute completion within a short time, by means of unitec" efforts; for it is nothing but the systematic inventory of what we possess by pure Reason. Nothing can here escape us ; nor can any experience increase our knowledge. By mea...« less