Critique of Pure Reason (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant)

What Alfred North Whitehead said about Plato (that all of Western philosophy was merely a footnote to Plato) could easily be said about Kant in regard to modern philosophy. It is interesting that Kant has had such an impact because in reality there are very few full blooded Kantians around. There are very few modern philosophers who would agree with the transcendental ideality of space and time, or who would agree that Kant succeeded in deducing the categories and their absolute validity in the transcendental deductions (the heart of the Critique of Pure Reason). But Kant completely changed the trajectory of philosophy. There are no philosophers doing pre-Kantian philosophy (dogmatic metaphysics) anymore. There is no modern Leibniz, and this is as true of the analytic as it is of the Continental tradition. Actually, it is true of our culture in general. Few people find the notion of pre-established harmony very convincing anymore, while lots of people found that doctrine convincing before Kant, and I would argue that that change is largely a result of Kant and his limiting of cognition to what we can experience. So Kant is an extremely important philosopher. In my opinion Kant is the most important philosopher since Plato. Unfortunately the Critique of Pure Reason is also where philosophy started to become esoteric and inaccessible to the lay person. Of course it would be impossible for someone with no formal training in philosophy to pick up a metaphysical tract by John Duns Scotus and understand it. Philosophy has always been difficult. But I think Kant's Critique of Pure Reason introduced a qualitative change into philosophy. While John Duns Scotus may not be immediately accessible to the lay person it was still possible to become acquainted with the problems he was dealing with (the existence of God, the problem of universals, etc.) without necessarily being a professional philosopher. In other words, philosophical debates were not insulated from the debates taking place in non-professional circles, they were often the same debates just carried on at a higher more technical level. With Kant philosophy really becomes an insulated and esoteric discipline where philosophers are debating with themselves, and they are debating issues that non-philosophers do not even consider issues (whether and how categories can be derived from the table of judgments, the transcendental unity of apperception, the transcendental ideality of space and time, etc.). Obviously this is not a hard and fast distinction but I think there is some truth to what I am saying. For those non-philosophers who want to read the Critique of Pure Reason and want some guidebooks to help them make sense of the book I do have some books to recommend but my short answer would be: unfortunately there is probably going to be a limit to how much you can do with the Critique of Pure Reason if you do not have formal training in philosophy. It is like a book in quantum mechanics. There are popular books that can give lay people some sense of quantum mechanics but if you really want to understand quantum mechanics you have to engage in the difficult task of learning the math and the science behind it, which is something few people are capable of doing on their own. The same is true of Kant. You can find popular books on Kant that give you some sense of what he was up to, but if you really want to understand Kant's philosophy you have to commit years to really working at it, and few people are probably capable of achieving it on their own. The first two books on Kant I would recommend to the beginner are not books I have actually read but were recommended to me by my Kant professor as books that are good for absolute beginners with Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason. The first is A Short Commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason by A.C. Ewing and the second is Kant's Critique of Pure Reason a Commentary for Students by T.E. Wilkerson. The first is supposed to be more accessible than the second. There is also a routledge philosophy guidebook to the Critique of Pure Reason Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason (Routledge Philosophy GuideBooks) by Sebastian Gardner (it will not let me link directly to the paperback edition but there is a cheaper paperback available). Personally I found Gardner's commentary to be quite accessible but I have also spent a fair amount of time studying Kant. Some of the other reviewers on amazon complain that it is not accessible to the beginner so if you find that to be the case I would recommend starting with one of the other two I listed above. Finally, there are three books that are extremely important in Kant scholarship for those who want to have a deeper understanding of the Critique of Pure Reason. I actually have not read all of any of them (I have read parts of two of them) but I know that they are definitely not for beginners. They are, however, very important for those who are serious about the Critique of Pure Reason. The First is Kant's Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense by Henry Allison. The second is Kant and the Claims of Knowledge by Paul Guyer (Allison and Guyer offer different, and conflicting, interpretations and there has been a long-standing debate between them about the correct way to interpret the Critique of Pure Reason). The last book that I think is really excellent is Kant and the Capacity to Judge: Sensibility and Discursivity in the Transcendental Analytic of the "Critique of Pure Reason" by Beatrice Longuenesse (I am currently working on a project using this book so I will probably be writing a review in a few months when I have finished). I also want to say a word about the translation. I do not read German but I have a few comments to make. First, there is no such thing as a perfect translation. No matter what you do as a translator you are going to have some people complaining. Anyone demanding a perfect translation, or looking for one, is looking for something that does not exist. If you want to become a Kant scholar you have to learn German. Unfortunately Kant is so important as a philosopher that it is necessary for all philosophers, whether they specialize in Kant or German philosophy or not, to have some understanding of Kant, so translations become necessary. I would not put too much stock in the negative reviews of this translation. This is not a perfect translation, you should know that going in, but I think it is probably as good as any, and there are two reasons I recommend reading this one. First, there are really two "standard" translations of the Critique of Pure Reason. The first is by Norman Kemp Smith and the second is this one by Guyer and Wood. My Kant professor has told me that the Norman Kemp Smith translation, while it was the standard for many years (and it was the first one I read), is very problematic. Specifically, Smith often corrects Kant's text to accord with his own interpretation of Kant. If you are not a serious Kant student that might not make much of a difference since you are probably not going to be delving into the subtleties of Kant's philosophy and Smith's translation should give you an accurate general picture of Kant's philosophy. But if you do plan on delving into the subtleties of Kant's philosophy it would be better to get a translation that has not been doctored to fit a particular interpretation. Second, this is, whether you like it or not, going to be the standard translation of Kant for awhile I think, which means when you read secondaries they are probably going to be using the same terms that Guyer and Wood use. It will make it easier when you are reading secondaries on Kant if you are already using the same terminology as the secondaries. I have not really compared translations so I am not sure how much different translations differ when translating some of the more important terms (sensibility, intuition, understanding, determination, etc.) but I think you will be safe if you stick with Guyer and Wood. In other words, it will not do you much good if you read a secondary which discusses the role of the understanding in cognition if the translation of Kant you read translated "understanding" with a different word (this might be an unrealistic example but things like that can happen with translations). So for those reasons I recommend getting this translation despite the fact that it is certainly not perfect. And good luck! Kant is an extremely exciting philosopher if you can succeed in understanding him (and do not feel too bad if you do not understand everything he says; no one does).

The 5 stars is for Kant’s work itself. The rest of this review is about the Kindle edition. If you are indifferent between the hard copy and the Kindle edition, buy the hard copy. The hard copy has a few errors, but very few, as you would expect in an extremely high-profile work with very talented people involved. In contrast, the Kindle edition has a number of errors. It seems likely that the Kindle edition was computer-generated, and then checked by an editor, but the level of care taken is lower than that for the hard copy. There are places, for example, where an A-pagination or B-pagination appears in the middle of text without brackets, an obvious glitch, since these indications duplicate bracketed indications elsewhere, and the vast majority of page indications are in brackets. I noticed a couple of places where editorial footnotes are italicized, even though the convention in the Kindle edition is for translator’s footnotes to be italicized. There are a few places where the text makes no sense, one must go to the hard copy to discover the correct text. An example, from the Kindle edition: Now since the proposition I think (taken problematically) contains the form of every judgment of understanding whatever, and accompanies all categories as their vehicle, it is clear that the inferences from this proposition can contain a merely transcendental use of the understanding, excluding every admixture of experience; and of such a procedure, after what we have shown above, we cannot at the outset for many very favorable concept. The error here is in the words “for many” near the end of the sentence. In the hard copy the text reads “form any”, and that makes sense. In general, the number of errors in the Kindle edition is far from shocking, and the edition is definitely serviceable. But if you are using the edition as a resource for a scholarly work, I’d suggest checking all quotations against the hard copy.

Had this book rented out of my university for a course. It was too good not to have on its own so I bought it after. The book itself came perfect, no damage, fresh covers and pages

The great epistemologist, ....the 'central figure of modern philosophy, who set the terms by which all subsequent thinkers have had to grapple.' Kant's transcendental deduction, that a-priori intellectual faculties determine the form of experience, and so the conditions for the understanding, was developed as a solution to David Hume's refutation of the empirical deduction of certain concepts. In particular, that there is no analytic link between cause and effect, but rather, that causality is merely a matter of constant conjunction of events. Therefore implying that this concept is 'applied to', rather than 'deduced from' experience,... i.e. it is a-priori to experience. Likewise, Time is an internal intuition, ...a means of ordering experience given the nature of mind. Thus Kant adds to analytic propositions and synthetic propositions, the notion of synthetic a-priori propositions. Given the nature of mind, we effectively supply the conceptual structure or form, in which experience is ordered and synthesized. This occurs prior to consciousness, again given the nature of mind, and thus is a necessity for experience to be possible at all. 'Reality per se', that is, Reality 'as it exists in itself', must then be conformed to our conceptual framework to be known at all,... rather than necessitating that our intellectual faculties conform to the Objects of 'Reality per se'. This was Kant's "Copernican Revolution" and retort to Hume. Reality as experienced, is termed 'phenomenal reality', or 'empirical reality'. It is implicit in Kant's transcendental deduction that empirical reality, must have a mind dependent component, i.e. the conceptual structure in which it is conformed. But what of unconceptualized Reality, that is, Reality as it is in itself, apart from mind? Kant called this Noumenal Reality, and is unknowable in principal. It is reasonable to subtract the form in which we know empirical reality, that is, the mind dependent components, and be left with an unknowable "something". This is a rational means of deriving Noumenal Reality as objective. Kant effectively demonstrated that metaphysics can not be a source of knowledge, as such questions are not amendable to the a-priori forms of the understanding, ...Kant's categories. As he stated, "I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith". Effectively, this necessitates an Agnosticism with respect to knowledge of God's existence, and places Atheism (if taken as being clearly delineated from Agnosticism) on the same rational level as Theism. Though Kant did not state this implicitly, to my knowledge. Viewed from a modern perspective and with respect to 'Noumenal Reality', it is reasonable to suppose that the a-priori intellectual faculties by which the mind evolved to synthesize experience at the macroscopic scale, are in effect artifacts, and therefore effectively artificial as applied to the microscopic realm as in quantum mechanics. Kant could not have foreseen this however. So in light of developments in modern physics, in particular quantum mechanics, Kant's transcendental deduction, should be restated as follows,... 'that a-priori intellectual faculties determine the form of experience, and so the conditions for the [intuitive] understanding'. But these are artificial conditions that are dependent upon the nature of mind. Indeed, no one has an intuitive understanding of quantum mechanics, despite it being the most accurate physical theory ever devised by man. Indeed, there remain immense conceptual problems, despite having gained predictive knowledge. Kant's epistemological analysis is relevant in the philosophy of modern physics, especially with respect to scientific (logical) positivism as opposed to 'objective realism'. The Copenhagen interpretation regarded the incompatibility between the unitary evolution of the wave-function and the non-deterministic state reduction as ultimately an epistemological issue, and not a fundamental issue with the completeness or otherwise of theory. The Schrödinger wave-function 'collapse' upon measurement, is a collapse into concepts, into conceptual values dependent upon mind, ....in it's experimental apparatus design, means of communication, and interpretation of results at the macroscopic scale. Mind necessarily presumes locality, counterfactuality, space and time, separability, and causality,.. for the intuitive understanding. Abraham Pais remarked that Bohr was the natural successor to Kant. W. Heisenberg developed a non-intuitive, operational approach based on observables, in matrix mechanics, while E. Schrödinger along with A. Einstein still expected Reality to conform to intuitive principals. Bohr won this debate, and it was a epistemological one. Before attempting Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason', I would recommended Frederick Copleston's overview of Kant, in his outstanding "A History of Philosophy: Volume VI: Modern Philosophy: From the French Enlightenment to Kant", and perhaps the previous two volumes in preparation,... or Kant's own "Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics".

There are several highly important books for philosophers and each thinker has to study them. Undoubtedly, Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is on of them. This Kant's Opus Magnum--in German as Kritik der reinen Vernunft--deals with some important areas of philosophy, particularly ontology, metaphysics, epistemology, God (three proofs of God's existence), partially physics, axiology, hermeneutics, history of philosophy, etc. The book was written in German and this edition was carefully translated and edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Mentioned edition contains several texts: this edition mainly follows the text of the 2nd edition of Critique of Pure Reason (1787, B), but--if there is difference between the 1st and the 2nd edition--this book either published all two versions as a main text, or mention divergences in 1st edition (1781, A) in footnotes. But book contains pagination of both editions, the 1st one (published in 1781; now mark as "A" edition) and the 2nd one (published in 1787, mark as "B" edition, it was "improved here and there", as we read on Title page). This edition contains also 'the third edition' of Critique, I mean Kant's Notes from his own copy of the first edition of Critique (published by B. Erdmann in 1881). What is more, this edition contains useful Footnotes written by Editors which kindly explain some problematical aspects and point at other works, either written by Kant, or written by other philosophers. To be honest with you, I usually study Czech edition/translation (transl. J. Loužil et al., Praha: Oikoymenh, 2001), but sometimes I use this English edition/translation for comparing some unclear, ambiguous aspects.

Complete wit footnotes and notes, academically useful, and was in great condition.

On the basis of the actual content itself, I consider this book to be the single most important book ever written, hands down, it’s not even close. Therefore, I recommend the “Critique of Pure Reason” to every human being, so it is worth giving it a few tries in understanding it, no matter who you are. There is hardly a forum of intellectual thought with an idea that is neither a reaction against or a reaction in accord with Kant’s critical project, particularly the first “Critique.” With that, I move on to this particular edition. If this book contained only the introduction, which is about 100 pages, I would rate it as a five-star book and suggest it to everyone. The fact of the matter is that the structure of the book is so finely laid out, that it is impossible to read it and not have an exact idea of why it is set up as it is, or what Kant’s general thinking is. The introduction to this book is among the best introductions I have ever seen for any book, and so I recommend taking a look at it, if you are first beginning study of Kant’s KrV. The translation seems good enough, for the most part, but I have my concerns, as one of the one-star reviewer noted. I think in some places the German is not translated in an idiomatic fashion, and makes the text incomprehensible, unless you have read another translation (and get the idea that way) or have read the German. For the most part, I think people are fine reading this edition, and, on some points, it is a bit stronger, because there is a slightly rougher translation that allows for deeper understanding, which folks who have translated texts will understand. My understanding is that Wood and Guyer do not have the philological pedigree and training to translate the KrV as well as some others (e.g., Pluhar or Smith). Over all, I think this is a fine edition of the KrV, but others, such as the N.K. Smith translations, are better. I would definitely give this one a read, if not for the sake of the introduction, then for a supplementary translation, especially if you don’t read German. Wood and Guyer are actually very knowledgeable about Kant’s Latin correlates to German words, which makes for a valuable contribution to the KrV translation literature.

I haven't started on the book yet, and who knows if I'll ever be able to finish it, so this short review is strictly about the print quality. It's poor. The font is small, which is understandable, but the borderlines of letters are blurry, which makes it tiring to read the book (on top of its contents). I have to wonder if this really is a genuine copy. If it is, Cambridge University Press did a VERY poor job in printing these copies.

Haven't read the whole book but whatever I've come across really takes time to understand.

Rien à redire

Kindle version is a scanned PDF of the book. Not a digitised text, so no text highlighting, no access to note making, no access to dictionary or translation notes.

The book, in terms of physicality, has not much to offer, but it is good in its form. It has a nice, sleek covering, and is a good height. It's pretty heavy but that's because of how long it is. The pages are great quality, a nice white, and the font is a good size and easy to read. The writing itself is a little hard to understand for me at times, so beware if you're a beginner to philosophy, or to Kant in general. Overall, great job, and a must-read, assuming you can actually read it.

türkçe de ne yazık ki kant çevrilerinin her biri b/k gibi olduğundan bu kitap en iyi alternatif seçenek herkese öneriyorum