Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics

What It's About

Kant wrote the Prolegomena in 1783, two years after the Critique of Pure Reason met with a reception he considered lukewarm and widely misunderstood. Where the Critique built its argument from the ground up, the Prolegomena works in reverse: it starts from the assumption that certain kinds of knowledge (mathematics, natural science) are already secure, and asks what must be true for that to be possible. From there it turns to the harder question of whether metaphysics could ever meet the same standard, or whether it is doomed to remain a battleground of unresolvable disputes.

Key Concepts

Central to the book is Kant's distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments, and his claim that genuine knowledge often depends on synthetic judgments known a priori - a category he argues had gone unrecognised before him. He credits Hume's scepticism about causation with waking him from what he called his "dogmatic slumber," and uses the book to answer it: showing how the mind's own structures make certain kinds of a priori knowledge possible, while also marking out firm limits on what reason can know about things as they are in themselves.

About the Author

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a philosopher who spent almost the whole of his life in and around Königsberg, in what was then Prussia. He is regarded as one of the central figures of the Enlightenment and a founding influence on modern philosophy, particularly in epistemology and ethics.

About This Edition

This is a 1902 translation by Paul Carus.