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The Critique of Pure Reason

3.82 of 5 stars 3.82 · rating details · 8,755 ratings · 259 reviews

Human reason, in one sphere of its cognition, is called upon to consider questions, which it cannot decline, as they are presented by its own nature, but which it cannot answer, as they transcend every faculty of the mind. It begins with principles, which cannot be dispensed with in the field of experience, and the truth and sufficiency of which are, at the same time, insu...more

Paperback, 540 pages

Published March 1st 2007 by Dodo Press (first published 1781)

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Jul 01, 2010 David rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Immanuel Kant is the kind of guy who not only sucks all of the joy out of life; he takes great pleasure in opening the spigot of your happiness-tank and watching it all spill out onto the burn-out lawn and sink into the earth -- seeping toward the planet's molten, pitiless core and, thereupon, toward its irrevocable dissipation.

If he were alive today, I suggest to you that Kant's corporeal manifestation would be that of a paunchy, balding man, eternally sixty years old, who is often seen in his...more Immanuel Kant is the kind of guy who not only sucks all of the joy out of life; he takes great pleasure in opening the spigot of your happiness-tank and watching it all spill out onto the burn-out lawn and sink into the earth -- seeping toward the planet's molten, pitiless core and, thereupon, toward its irrevocable dissipation.

If he were alive today, I suggest to you that Kant's corporeal manifestation would be that of a paunchy, balding man, eternally sixty years old, who is often seen in his yard, cleaning out his gutters or basement wells or tending his garden joylessly. He's perhaps wearing a modified pith helmet and too-tight khaki shorts which reveal the topography of his bunchy twill underpants as he crouches to slake the thirst of his prized marigolds. Of course, his plastic eyeglass frames are a mottled brown -- no, not tortoise-shell, but a harsh two-tone pattern reminiscent of the formica customarily surrounding a late 1970s basement wet bar. Additionally, the lenses are several sizes too large to conform to even the most deluded strictures of fashion. His socks (or 'stockings,' as he calls them) are a heavy, nauseous tan, ribbed but slouchy. A stubborn elastic band around the stockings' crown tries to hold them steadily around the mid-calf, but the up-again, down-again athleticism of gardening forbids this vain hold-out against gravity. Consequently, the stockings occasionally puddle around his knobby ankles. But not for long. He grunts, squats, hoists -- grunts, squats, hoists. If the ritual's speed were only increased and set to an uptempo adult contemporary favorite, we might suspect it was a dance. Or else an elaborate tic.

Next we should discuss his legs, shouldn't we? Necessity seems to demand it... Kant's legs -- when both his safari-aspirational shorts and his stockings are performing optimally -- are visible from the mid-thigh to the mid-calf and are fantastically white and nearly hairless. It's the kind of white that shames even the newest-fallen snow, and the kind of hairlessness that visits certain men at an advancing age. It's almost as if the sproutings of those once-masculine hairs had wearied over time and just surrendered the puttering gardener to a pleasant sexual neutrality. His legs, otherwise, are surprisingly bulbous with muscle at the height of the calf: a cleft, spastic musculature, as in the shape of cloven hooves. His sandals are wide and deep brown about the straps (three straps in total, none crossed or set at provocative angles), and vaguely semitic in design -- which is to say, tough as citrus rinds, in order to deflect the cruelties of the Negev.

This is what Immanuel Kant would look like today, probably. If he were your neighbor (a half dozen houses down the street, perhaps) and you were driving to your vinyl-sided ranch or bungalow with a sackful of perishable groceries in the trunk of your Volvo S40, and if you tapped the horn friskily and waved at Mr. Kant as he dug in his garden, he would, I assure you, remain defiantly crouched, folded in upon himself, beholden to some faithless prayer. He would seem as if to have not heard your car or your horn and neither to have suspected your hand were raised in salutation. But of course he is nothing else but an intelligent man, and so he hears and of course he knows, or at least suspects. But he simply straightens his sun-bleached helmet, sinks his fingers more deeply into his yellow suede work gloves, and digs toward an object which will bring him no joy or satisfaction, but rather a steady, textureless hum within and throughout his consciousness which passes in some muddled cultures for the noise of enlightenment.(less)

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May 10, 2013 Elena Holmgren rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

The CPR - it has the initials it does for a reason. Many brave souls have perished trying to climb this sucker. But if you make it to the top, I guarantee you that there can be no more illuminating perspective to reward your efforts. This is one of those summits that offers incomparable prospects - as well as revealing something about what it means to have a prospect at all. In so doing, it transforms the understanding of all other perspectives. Here lies a powerful key to all philosophy.

This i...more

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Jan 12, 2008 Charissa rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: people who have dropped enough acid to find it amusing

Shelves: weltanschauung, threw-across-room

I just Kant stand him.

Seriously though... why does so much Western philosophy remind me of arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? I swear, these gentlemen had their panties wrapped so tightly I don't know how they ever took a proper dump.

The problem with Kant (aside from how much he enjoyed listening to the sound of his own voice droning on and on) is that he was irretrievably mired in a Christian world-view, separated from nature, and cursed with the precision of having b...more

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Jul 28, 2008 Tyler rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Academics & Philosophy Majors Only

Shelves: philosophy

Parts and pieces of this master work intrigued and enlightened me, but Kant's overall proposal escapes my grasp. After reading through it, I can see why no univocal interpretation of the text can ever be possible.

The troubling aspect of Critique is its complexity. No explanatory system should demand an exegesis so convoluted, using so much idiosyncratic language, and terminating in so many loose ends and vagaries. Intended to explain the world of experience, among other things, this book instead...more

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Apr 11, 2007 Jenny Park rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

immanuel kant is by farrrrr the world's most precise philosopher... EVER! haha.. this text, like many philosophical texts out there... was really dry.. and um.. long. but there's definitely a reason why this one's regarded as one of the greatest philosophical pieces out there. so the book's premise in a nutshell... noone can argue FOR or AGAINST an afterlife/God. he also digs into the idea that our understanding of the world and our ideas are based not only on experience, but on a priori concept...more

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Jul 13, 2011 Ceridwen marked it as to-read · review of another edition Recommends it for: Dour young men

Recommended to Ceridwen by: Dour young men

Shelves: reviewed, philosophy

There was this one time, when I was traveling with Mum in England(?), and we were staying in this B&B. We'd washed out our underthings and put them on the radiator to dry, and we were really, really punchy from jet-lag. We were making all these roasting underpants jokes, and laughing harder and harder. The guest in the neighboring room was this dour looking kid, the all-black-wearing sort with his bangs in his eyes, and we tipped over into full insanity when Mum said, "I'm sure we're interru...more

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Nov 16, 2012 Chris marked it as intermittently-reading · review of another edition

I feel slightly less daunted wandering amidst the erector-set superstructures of this absolute beast of undeniably brilliantly constructed and equally undeniably viscously expressed thought.

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Jul 10, 2012 Jacob Stubbs rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: philosophy

In this monumental work, Kant critiques Hume's empiricism, thereby sparking a "Copernican Revolution in philosophy". In doing this, Kant creates two realities, the phenomenal and the noumenal and shows that everything man perceives is an imposition of the human mind, thereby creating this phenomenal (experienced reality). In doing this, Kant refutes the cosmological (first cause), teleological (argument from design) and ontological arguments for the existence of God, showing that all of these ar...more

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Feb 01, 2013 Kipriadi prawira added it · review of another edition

I first sat down to read Kant's Critique in March of 1994, and after about 60 pages, I realized that I was in way over my head. Kant defines his terms precisely and uses them just as precisely as he builds his arguments. Miss a definition and you're lost for good.So, I started over with a pencil in hand and copied out every definition and paraphrased each argument in outline form so I could review as I went along. Periodically I sat down and transcribed my notes as a further review, making sure...more

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Dec 05, 2012 Pierre E. Loignon rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: philosophie, religion, science

Au lieu de commencer à philosopher en lisant les auteurs de notre siècle afin d'obtenir du succès en faisant de beaux papiers à la mode, Karl Jaspers, dans son Introduction à la philosophie, conseillait aux néophytes d’aller d’abord lire Platon et Kant. Bien que la lecture de Kant sera grandement facilité par celle de Leibniz et de Hume, mais aussi d'Aristote, de Descartes, de Spinoza, de Berkeley et de Locke, je souscris assez bien à l'opinion de Jaspers. Et, de fait, tous les philosophes vraim...more Au lieu de commencer à philosopher en lisant les auteurs de notre siècle afin d'obtenir du succès en faisant de beaux papiers à la mode, Karl Jaspers, dans son Introduction à la philosophie, conseillait aux néophytes d’aller d’abord lire Platon et Kant. Bien que la lecture de Kant sera grandement facilité par celle de Leibniz et de Hume, mais aussi d'Aristote, de Descartes, de Spinoza, de Berkeley et de Locke, je souscris assez bien à l'opinion de Jaspers. Et, de fait, tous les philosophes vraiment marquants se réfèrent inévitablement à Platon et à Kant.
Après avoir tout lu Platon, je me suis donc lancé dans Kant en commençant avec sa Critique de la raison pure. Depuis, je l'ai lue trois fois, d'un couvert à l'autre, en plus de plusieurs lectures partielles pour divers travaux, sans compter que j'ai à peu près tout lu les autres livres qu'il a écrits. Il n'y a que l'Opus postumum et la Métaphysique des moeurs que je n'ai pas encore trouvé l'occasion de lire parmi ses oeuvres principales. Bref, j'ai lu beaucoup Kant, beaucoup sur Kant et je suis loin d'avoir d'en avoir fini avec lui. C’est pour moi un des plus grand philosophes de tous les temps et surtout le philosophe par excellence de la moralité.
La Critique de la raison pure ne se donne pas gratuitement. Elle exige, pour être compréhensible par son lecteur, que ce dernier dispose d’une actualité existentielle morale ainsi que de la capacité corollaire d’abstraction philosophique. Il pourra alors se prêter à une véritable expérience philosophique d’orientation de l’éclairement des clôtures et ouvertures de l’esprit humain.
La position critique qu’il nous présente ici me semble toujours être la position par excellence pour philosopher, mais aussi pour vivre sa foi (quelle soit politique, artistique, morale ou religieuse) et pour évoluer dans le monde de la science, tout en demeurant sur le terrain d’une possible communication ouverte avec l’autre.
Le passage qui m’a donné le plus de mal, c’est le saut qu’il nous faut faire lorsque se présente, brusquement, sa table des catégories. Kant ne tente même pas d'en faire la déduction. Ce ne sont toutefois pas des dogmes pour autant, mais des concepts hypothétiques dont il faut évaluer l’utilité et l’exhaustivité afin d’évaluer si l'on peut trouver mieux avant de les rejeter. Comme toujours avec les concepts métaphysiques, chez Kant, ce sont des noumènes au sens négatifs, c’est-à-dire des postulats et non des réalités ontologiques.
Je ne vais pas aborder chaque détail pour ne pas abuser de la patience des lecteurs et lectrices de ce commentaire, mais pour aider quiconque aimerait s’y initier, je conseille fortement de commencer par lire la partie sur les Antinomies de la raison pure. Il s’agit de la première section que Kant a écrite et tous les problèmes qu’il aborde dans les sections précédentes et subséquentes cherchent à expliquer comment il a trouvé ces solutions aux Antinomies et ce qui en découle.
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May 12, 2012 Bob rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is the greatest philosophy book I have ever read, and this translation is a great help in understanding this abstruse and recondite work. One of my philosophy professors told me that native speakers of German who read English who were having difficulty with reading this book in the original German were advised to read Norman Kemp Smith's translation- this one.
This book explains the qualifications and limitations on our understanding of reality, how it makes sense to speak of free will even...more

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Sep 22, 2011 Archetech rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a great work. Nearly all philosophy after has been a reaction to it or an outgrowth from it. One cannot tell if this is because Kant was truly so influential or because he saw with such depth and unity the fruitful course philosophy would take.

The language can be daunting and exhausting. It is, however, precise and if one can follow the concepts in it, it works almost like a dry poetry that seems to lay bare the foundations of knowledge and experience. It is such a chore to wade through...more

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May 06, 2010 Katsumi rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: philosophy

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Kant begins with the simple statement that all knowledge is based upon experience. It is the last easily understood sentence in the book. Philosophy had established two types of knowledge: analytical and synthetic. A valid analytical statement is always absolutely true, thus is "known". The statement "The sum of two right angles in the Euclidian system is equal to a straight line" is an analytical statement. It is "true" in that the statement is derived from Euclidian propositions and agrees wit...more Kant begins with the simple statement that all knowledge is based upon experience. It is the last easily understood sentence in the book. Philosophy had established two types of knowledge: analytical and synthetic. A valid analytical statement is always absolutely true, thus is "known". The statement "The sum of two right angles in the Euclidian system is equal to a straight line" is an analytical statement. It is "true" in that the statement is derived from Euclidian propositions and agrees with the propositions from which it is derived. It says nothing about the actual nature of the world. The statement "The cat is on the table" is a synthetic statement. The word synthetic used means a synthesis of known and knower. The synthetic statement is open to dispute. It may be the product of deception, imagination or any number of other factors which make it beyond absolute knowledge. Kant's book is an attempt to establish that there is or is not some connection in some manner in which any synthetic knowledge can be known with the certainty that an analytical statement can be "known". Synthetic statements include all scientific knowledge, such as the second law of thermodynamics. The second law necessitates existencce of physical material which obeys it. In order to be "knowable" the knowledge must be a priori as a necessary condition. The closest that Kant comes to establishing this connection is via the type of knowledge called synthetic a priori, which is to say a joining of the known and knower without experience of the known by the knower. The closest he comes to establishing that this type of knowledge is real is the knowledge of TIME, which he asserts is not itself experienced but whose reality can be asserted via the experience of events which have sequence. A.N. Whitehead uses the example of space as synthetic a priori, in that space known within a given distance can be known a prior that it extends far beyond possible experience. A priori is necessary for certainty, but not sufficient. Neither TIME nor SPACE establishes that anything synthetic can be known with the total certainty that an analytical statement can be "known". As he puts it, "Existence is not a true predicate." It should be obvious that Kant considers any knowledge which is not absolutely certain to be something less than knowledge. It is interesting that the later German philosopher Schopenhauer would consider no-one a man who had not read and understood the "Critique of Pure Reason". It was on my high school reading list, and I tried to read it then, but interested people who are not advanced students of logic and philosophy would doubtless be better off reading an abridged version.

"The Critique" is a continuation of the tradition of attempts to prove the existence of God, which was seen by some as being "necessary" and therefore true in a sense that the existence of the natural world is not "necessary". That view was followed up by Descartes' famous assertion "I think, therefore I am." Kant rejected both these views with his famous assertion "Existance is not a true predicate." Later, the British philosopher Bertrand Russell modified Descartes' statement to "There is thought, therefore there is existance."
Russell lived after Kant, so Kant's reaction is unknown. Kant uses logic to come to oppposite conclusions, contradictions. In "A Brief History of Time" Steven Hawking shows that some of these contrary statements are in fact identical statements because Kant was using the classical view that time is constant, while the contradictions can be explained by Einstein's thory that time is actually a dependent function, passing at different rates from different viewpoints depending upon velocity. Perhaps some of the theory of relativity could have been extrapolated from the "Critique of Pure Reason", but Kant did not make the connection. Perhaps it influenced some scientists around the turn of the 20th century before the Michaelson-Morley experiment or even before Maxwell. Who knows. Today Kant's influence is principally through his ethical thought, which shows up in some Jewish commentaries on the Bible as well as in the larger community.
His conclusions that synthetic propositions cannot be known with the certainty that analytical propositions can be "known" is simply taken as an everyday part of life today. (less)

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Sep 16, 2012 hirtho marked it as partially-read · review of another edition

Shelves: philosophy

9/16 - I read straight through the intros and first 400 pages and then had to gloss a lot of the tables and dual column appendices which were over my head, by which point I was sorta lost for the last few sections which I could only take as reiterating the aspects of the first half.

All that I think I really understood of this was the distinction between a priori/transcendental reason and empirical/analytical reason, with more and more miniscule distinctions being made which I'm unsure what argum...more

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Dec 04, 2011 Erik rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

My advice for anyone beginning the K.d.r.V. is to maintain your independence of judgment. Don't get buried in the terminology, the secondary literature or your own obsessions or reasons for approaching the book. Try to think through what Kant is saying and bring before your mind all of the possibilities for what he could mean, then eliminate them one by one, until you have arrived at your reading of the Kritik. I would encourage doing Leibniz and the Pre-Critical writings first, otherwise you wi...more

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Dec 04, 2012 Bradley rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Never read the Frankfurt School, Deleuze, or basically anyone in the 20th century who criticizes Kant without first reading Kant - this man is a genius unlike anyone since. Once you figure out that Adorno (for example) is basically appropriating and cherry picking quotes to make Kant look bad (and Lenin does this in his book Empiro-Criticism and Materialism) - you realize that they are all second class scholars compared to this genius! Honestly there are very few philosophers who truly change th...more

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Oct 29, 2009 Anthony rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: philosophy-etc

I'm trying to decide whether or not I get it.

Sometimes I think I have just understood a passage of Kant only to discover that I have actually just been having my own thoughts pertaining to something or other in the content of the passage, and this is sometimes rewarding, but it is nevertheless not exactly what I intended to accomplish.

Say Kant is writing about perception or being, and say I misunderstand Kant-- what exactly happens when I misunderstand Kant, and by misunderstanding him, discov...more

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Sep 07, 2007 Erin rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I think that there should be a philosophy book on everyone's favorite book shelf and Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" is mine. Poetic, prophetic and achingly, simply complex. I had a professor once that would say "universal" every time we discussed this book the same way that some people say "God". That's what it's like.

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May 19, 2013 Ahad rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: metaphysics, philosophy

This book is metally exhausting by all means, you can't read 10 pages without feeling overwhelmed by the complicated structure of it. It will most definitely make you lose all perceptions under speculative questions in the name of investigating into the human reason and metaphysics.
In some chapters I felt completely disqust of human sentiments and in others I was intrigued by Kant's thoughts about the existence of God, the most interesting chapters for me were the Transcendental Aesthetic and t...more

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Sep 12, 2012 Kye rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Still wondering how mathematics is synthetic a priori, but the work laid some wide territory for philosophers and scientists alike. Many of the reviewers seem like they just don't understand Kant or like to show off that they read him. It's easier than most people think. If you can nail down his view of time being separate from the time outside the mind than you'll understand the rest of it.

I loved reading Kant. I enjoyed walking around his castle of argument and doctrine. The thing that always...more

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Jan 26, 2013 Fran Globlek rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'd recommend this book to anyone who takes thinking seriously. If you don't have enough time, just read the 1. and 3. part, the Transcendental Aesthetic and the Transcendental Dialectic.

The writing is horrible, sentences usually have 100+ words, but the ideas are phenomenal! (...and noumenal? heh!)

You'll see how this man PROVED arguing about the existance of God, soul or anything of the like is pointless and how you can say and prove anything you want about such thing, and however convincing yo...more

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Jan 24, 2012 Garrett Busshart rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A more readable translation of the text, though I prefer and work with the Guyer/Wood edition for its thoroughness, e.g. both "A" and "B" publications, an index, glossary, footnotes, etc. I have given this review five stars because I would find anything less to be an insult to its original author. This translation would garner roughly three or four stars for its readability (if you can ignore and "read through" the excessive and awkwardly placed commas), with points being docked for its age, ine...more

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Sep 25, 2012 Chris Byron rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Sheer genius alone is why this book deserves five stars, from all readers. I mean seriously, look at the giant noggin on the cover of the book. It's comparable only to Lenin.

That said, in a letter to a friend, Kant confessed that this book was the culmination of twelve years of deep thought, and only five to six months of rapid writing with “no concern” for the readers’ leisure. I don’t think it’s too presumptuous to state, that the deeper one delves into the book, the murkier the writing become...more Sheer genius alone is why this book deserves five stars, from all readers. I mean seriously, look at the giant noggin on the cover of the book. It's comparable only to Lenin.

That said, in a letter to a friend, Kant confessed that this book was the culmination of twelve years of deep thought, and only five to six months of rapid writing with “no concern” for the readers’ leisure. I don’t think it’s too presumptuous to state, that the deeper one delves into the book, the murkier the writing becomes.

Kant marks the culmination of the return to the subject in philosophy, and he also marks the break between analytic and continental thought. After the Catholic Church ruined philosophy, from Aristotle to Descartes (around 2,000 years!), Descartes was bold enough to attempt to erect a philosophical theory of knowledge contingent upon the certainties of the subject (the cogito). Descartes’ attempts were fairly messy after the cogito, and the empiricist (Locke and Hume) pounced on him. None of these thinkers were capable of erecting a sturdy foundation for epistemology, let alone metaphysics, ontology, ethics, etc. As Kant informs us in this book, Hume awoke him from his slumber, and he attempted a task comparable only to Plato, Marx, and Hegel. He attempted to erect an entire systemic philosophy.*

The Critique of Pure Reason is Kant’s epistemological and metaphysical work. Well, more of a critique of metaphysics, in hopes to put the train back on the rails. A train that – when reading Leibniz – is clearly loose, on fire, and heading for a village of small children. In order to reorient our entire frame of thought, Kant conducts what he calls the philosophical Copernican revolution. Instead of worrying about how external objects impact our senses, and how they are shaped in our mind, he inverts centuries of philosophy in what is a rather facile, but ingenious move. Let us instead delve into the question of how the subjects mind is preformed to impose forms upon the objective world. He conducts this revolutionary twist in the Transcendental Analytic (which is the most exciting chapter in the text). Instead of seeing space and time as things we perceive, Kant views space and time as “forms of intuition,” that is, forms we impose upon the outer world.

What I’ve just said is basically Kant 101, the first thing you’ll learn about Kant on Wikipedia, an intro book, or any basic philosophy course. Reason being, the rest of the book gets really hairy, really confusing, and really jumbled, really fast. As Kant begins to deduce the categories of our mind, and the schematic relationship between our reason, and judgment, to the objects as perceived in intuition, he leaves himself open to many critiques, and interpretations. These contentions are not modern; Kant had to publish a whole other book (The Prolegomena), a summarized version of his work, just to clarify the most important aspects of The Critique of Pure Reason.

At the end of this book, the reader is left with a problem that begins in Kant, and has yet to end. Do I go on to read the rest of his works, and explore his entire system, as a system, or do I go on to read something else, and pick out bits and pieces from this book that I fine useful, and discard others (albeit they may be accounted for in the larger system)? Generally, the analytic thinker will do the latter and the continental thinker the former. Of course, the horror begins once we remain true to Kant’s system. The continental thinker now realizes we must understand all subsequent replies, and rebuttals, to Kant, in their entire system too. Thus marks the period of German Idealism, through Marxism, to various schools of French Philosophy. We must erect whole systems of knowledge. Or, we can take the analytic approach, and blast away like a rabid hobo with a shot gun, seeing wisdom in whatever hits a mark, and ignoring all the debris, blood (imperialism), and wasted shells.

I want to make one last trivial point. The Penguin edition biography of Kant, found in the introduction, is worth the price of the book alone. Kant was notoriously known for being a boring man, and so consistent, that someone could set their watch by his walking schedule. This is true, but Christ, this biography will have any reader in tears of laughter.

* Something only Marx succeeded in, yeah I said it, and if you’ve been following my reviews, you knew I’d say it too!
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Sep 30, 2009 gokce added it · review of another edition

Shelves: fall-2009

Schema/Synthesis/Imagination

My dissertation project investigates the contradictory perceptions of temporality on the construction site of a renewable energy plant in Abu Dhabi. I am mainly interested in understanding how an apocalyptic environmental time becomes woven together with capitalist time, a time of continuous progress, rationalization and exact knowledge. I explore how architects, engineers and researchers imagine a technologically enhanced space that does not yet fully exist, within a...more Schema/Synthesis/Imagination

My dissertation project investigates the contradictory perceptions of temporality on the construction site of a renewable energy plant in Abu Dhabi. I am mainly interested in understanding how an apocalyptic environmental time becomes woven together with capitalist time, a time of continuous progress, rationalization and exact knowledge. I explore how architects, engineers and researchers imagine a technologically enhanced space that does not yet fully exist, within a temporal frame that is constantly shifting from infinity to imminent destruction.

Before proceeding further, let me clarify the type(s) of imagination at work within the construction site. Kant identifies two main operations of the imagination, “synthesis” and “schematism,” through which intuitions and otherwise heterogeneous concepts become juxtaposed. Synthesis occurs at the moment when one perceives an object X, and recognizes the object X as a concept. It facilitates the production of generalizations through which objects accrue transcendental meanings. As such, I see a tree, and re-cognize it as a tree, thereby conjoining the object I perceive with a range of objects that I have sensed before, and I will continue to sense hereafter. On the other hand, a schema, Kant argues, is “a monogram of the pure a priori imagination through which, and according to which, images become possible in the first place” (CPR, A-142). Etymologically, the word monogram means single letter, and yet is used to refer to a character formed of several letters in one design. Accordingly, the resulting mono-gram that Kant refers to here (the schema) is a product of multiple letters (pure a priori imaginations), and yet when it is acted out in space and time, it appears to be a single letter. This single letter determines the relationship that a priori imaginations have, or will have, with each other and with space and time. Hence, a schema realizes the mediation of intuitions and concepts, applying a priori concepts to the spatial and temporal conditions of intuition. The critical difference between synthesis and schematism, as Deleuze (1978) identifies, is the order of questions. In synthesis, the tree is available to the subject, and the subject needs to recognize the tree as such. However, a schema is not a rule of recognition. It is a rule of production, which occurs through producing an experience in space and time, in conformity with one’s own concepts (Deleuze 1978). A construction site, then, is the ultimate schema, in which developers, researchers, architects, engineers and construction workers slowly achieve the spatio-temporal projections of their multiple a priori concepts. It is a mono-gram of the manifold pure a priori imaginations that constitute the site.

It is important to stress here that according to Kant, I, the ethnographer, can only know myself as a subject. Everything else that I perceive appears to me as an object only, and I am incapable of experiencing the subjectivities of others whom I attempt to investigate. The gap between us is irreconcilable. Thus in this case, what I perceive is a collection of human objects, creating a schema of their contradicting thoughts, and I rely on their verbal and physical declarations in order to develop a sense of their subjectivities. I synthesize the objects that I perceive and try to build a concept out of my sensory experience. Contrary to what Deleuze (1978) argues, my first responsibility may be to create a record of this sensory information. Then, I try to develop concepts that match the processes that I have witnessed. Indeed, I have prior knowledge that shapes the way that I attend to the process of production. There are certain elements of production that are of interest to me, and others that I cannot be receptive towards. This selection process in fact implies that synthesis does not operate by itself; an active process of schematism, through which I select the objects that fit former knowledge, interests and indeed concepts, assists synthesis. Thus although I wish to be open to cognize all objects, the schematism inherent to my thought process disables such neutrality. Every thought I develop, then, is a double movement of synthesis and schematism. I legislate reality as such.

However, regardless of the kind of imagination at work, let us return to the very moment where I watch the set of human objects and their diverse prostheses building a schema of their concepts. Observing this process of producing the schema I can infer judgments about the various concepts that may be shaping the object that is under construction. My project, then, carries the inherent assumption that the process of putting together the schema is the process that reveals something about the a priori concepts that give direction to this production, as what interests me is not the schema itself, but the a priori concepts that instigate this schema. How does one use the rule of production in order to achieve a priori concepts? Kant argues here, “the concept must contain something which is represented in the object that is to be subsumed under it. This means that the concept must in some way be influenced by the material to be perceived” (CPR, A-137). Thus Kant also points to a double movement: I may wish to develop pure concepts of thought and try to apply them on the world around me, but I develop these concepts via relying on the world around me. Thus, unfortunately, my imagination is somehow limited by the intuitions that I may cognize. As Adorno suggests, “this is the non-subjective element within subjectivity.” It points to the priority of the object over knowledge. He (1959: 137) succinctly argues: “As knowing subjects we only know ourselves. In this sense we are never able to get outside ourselves; we are imprisoned within ourselves. This, too, has its profound truth in Kantian philosophy because it means that the world in which we are captive is in fact a self-made world: it is the world of exchange, the world of commodities, the world of reified human relations that confront us, presenting us with a façade of objectivity, a second nature.” What exactly is it that I may know by observing a construction site? Adorno would suggest that I develop a sense of the-thing-in-itself by analyzing its social production. I trace the conditions that lead to the emergence of this thing as such, while mapping the multiple imaginations of the objects responsible for its constitution.

Is it a legitimate task to explore different understandings of time within the construction site? According to Kant, mutable objects transform in time, but time itself endures. It is a pure form, like space, because it structures and precedes all experience, both of outer objects and inner states. How could time have a qualifier? The only qualifier that time would accept is “empty,” where empty time is the time in which one is not. However, Adorno (1959: 228) challenges the idea of a pure form by suggesting that “the relation of form to content is not that of an empty form into which a content flows, as generally appears to be in the case of Kant, but here, too, the situation is one of reciprocity. That is to say, this form only exists if it has a content, because it is form only as the form of a content, just as, on the other hand – as Kant correctly perceived – a content can only exist if these forms can actually be said to exist.” Does this imply that the content gives shape to the form as well? The time-form, as experienced in the construction site in multiple ways, inheres different types of social content, which eventually drag subjects in opposing directions, although enabling them to build this one renewable energy plant. The observation that temporality is experienced in multiple ways, such as capitalist time or environmentalist time, does not mean that I am itemizing time. I am merely suggesting that there are different cognitions of time within and towards the same time-form, which shape the time-form itself. Finally, the social content of time creates and re-creates the inward meanings of time as such.

In this short essay, I tried to briefly touch upon the ways in which Kant’s thought relates to my research questions. Indeed, this is not a comprehensive analysis, but it sheds some light on the ways in which Kantian theory could provide guidance. Benefiting from the cognitive framework of my preliminary ethnographic research, I concluded that the processes of schematism and synthesis cannot be separated, especially because they both produce limits for each other. Finally, I attempted to think through the possibility of an engagement with temporal experience, from a Kantian perspective, thereby understanding that the time form is inevitably shaped by socially mediated time content.

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May 31, 2011 Jesse Lopes rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Kant, with this book, attempted to do what Locke had done: examine how philosophy should be conducted based on if it can be conducted at all. Locke's method ended in the so-called "graveyard of Hume", where knowledge became prejudice, and prejudice, or sentiment, our one and only guiding thread to reality (one can see how this particularized irrational guidance, when generalized, becomes Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand"). To this, Kant put on his cape, and with the resilience and fortitude of a sto...more Kant, with this book, attempted to do what Locke had done: examine how philosophy should be conducted based on if it can be conducted at all. Locke's method ended in the so-called "graveyard of Hume", where knowledge became prejudice, and prejudice, or sentiment, our one and only guiding thread to reality (one can see how this particularized irrational guidance, when generalized, becomes Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand"). To this, Kant put on his cape, and with the resilience and fortitude of a stoic, erected a most peculiar philosophical edifice. Time and space were deemed unreal, mere formalities of our human ability to perceive and cognize. When these forms dealt with perception, our inferences could be considered true, but when they dealt with cognition, they could only be "dialectical illusions". Kant very brilliantly concludes that we are never satisfied with this because our concepts are often too large for our objects (the drive to religion), and our objects too large for our concepts (the drive to science). But there is a unity for the two, since our sensory experience makes knowledge possible and vice versa. It is not as the empiricists claimed, that science was discovering the object of nature, no more than what the rationalists claimed, that religion was discovering the object of God. In fact, Kant means to say, we were only learning about ourselves. We may have mapped the human genome, but, to Kant, this is not what the human genome really is. The human genome is really a we know not what, an "= x", as Kant puts it, of which we can say what it is, but not why it is, this being unknowable. Part and parcel, then, to the system, is the allowance of an unknowable generative essence, which imputes that we will always mix with disaster if we try and get at it (GMO's are a case in point). A society, in other words, that intends upon producing geniuses will invariably end up producing dullards, since the noumena must by definition retract from the phenomenal knower who knows neither what lies behind consciousness nor beyond it, and so Kant is the point where West concedes to the East some very important philosophical points, which were articulated very long ago in Taoist thought, which were soon to be brushed aside by the Christian optimism of the system of Hegel, and affirmed by the Buddhist pessimism of Schopenhauer.(less)

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Feb 15, 2009 Rhonda rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: philosophy

There is little to be said of this great work, groundbreaking even as it remains today and a synthesis for modern thought of the nineteenth century and beyond. It requires an amazing attention to language and detail and, I suggest, an excellent instructor to help one past the many hurdles which require the reader to wrestle with concepts he or she, though rightfully kept in abeyance, have allowed to creep back into one's mental processing at weak moments. Criticism will, of course, always be eas...more

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May 18, 2013 JP rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is it. This is where Kant sets his philosophy of epistemology based on the differentiation between that which can be known a priori and that which can be known only be experience. It is lame because it allows for no extension of principles to logical conclusions. Kant ignores the truly practical but does note the "unavoidable problems" in relation to "god, freedom, and immortality." He does divide the resulting thought process into the synthetic and analytic. This may have been a step forwa...more

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Aug 01, 2012 محمد added it · review of another edition

ما قرأت هو نقض العقل المحض ترجمة موسى وهبي في الحقيقة إن الكتاب يبرز جهدا كبيرا قام به المؤلف أعني كانط إلا أن المشروع الذي توخى تشييده فيه انهار قبل أن تبنى أركانه وذلك لوقوع كانط وبشكل واضح أسيرا لإشكالات ديفيد هيوم المشاغبية ولخلطه بين التعقل والتخيل بنحو فاضح ولسيطرة حالة القلق من الوقوع بمثالية باركلي التي وقع فيها وإن بشكل مختلف في الحقيقة إن كانط رجل مفكر وله أفكار جديرة بالتأمل ولكن لا يرقى لأن يكون فيلسوفا فضلا أن يعد في مصاف أرسطو حاله حال ديكارت الذي اعلي شأنه زورا ككثير من المتفلسفة...more

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Mar 13, 2010 Andrew rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: philosophy

This book was truly revolutionary. Critique marks the last phase of the Enlightenment period and opens the transition into more modern philosophy. Whether you are a fan of Hegel, Heidegger or Russell, there's no way to start without first responding to the Kantian challenge.

Put in most simple terms, what Kant did was place the subject and experience as the starting point and the limitation of reason. He argues his point meticulously and systematically. Some reviewers have criticized Kant for bei...more

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Feb 24, 2011 Guy marked it as to-read · review of another edition

I started this book, once, a long long time ago. It did not appeal to me, then. However, GR friend Stan has recommended it, and perhaps it is time to re-look at it. Stan's interesting and amusing recommendation includes Nietzsche, which I have also dabbled in, and Schopenhauer, whom I have also dabbled in.

I'm thinking that it is an interesting recommendation to me, right now, because my reading Chomsky's Language and Responsibility is filled with his critiques of the poor expression of empirical...more

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About Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant was an 18th-century German philosopher from the Prussian city of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia). He is regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of modern Europe and of the late Enlightenment.

His most important work is The Critique of Pure Reason, a critical investigation of reason itself. It encompasses an attack on traditional metaphysics and epistemology, and highligh...more Immanuel Kant was an 18th-century German philosopher from the Prussian city of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia). He is regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of modern Europe and of the late Enlightenment.

His most important work is The Critique of Pure Reason, a critical investigation of reason itself. It encompasses an attack on traditional metaphysics and epistemology, and highlights Kant's own contribution to these areas. The other main works of his maturity are The Critique of Practical Reason, which concentrates on ethics, and The Critique of Judgement, which investigates aesthetics and teleology.

Pursuing metaphysics involves asking questions about the ultimate nature of reality. Kant suggested that metaphysics can be reformed through epistemology. He suggested that by understanding the sources and limits of human knowledge we can ask fruitful metaphysical questions. He asked if an object can be known to have certain properties prior to the experience of that object. He concluded that all objects that the mind can think about must conform to its manner of thought. Therefore if the mind can think only in terms of causality – which he concluded that it does – then we can know prior to experiencing them that all objects we experience must either be a cause or an effect. However, it follows from this that it is possible that there are objects of such a nature that the mind cannot think of them, and so the principle of causality, for instance, cannot be applied outside of experience: hence we cannot know, for example, whether the world always existed or if it had a cause. And so the grand questions of speculative metaphysics are off limits, but the sciences are firmly grounded in laws of the mind.

Kant believed himself to be creating a compromise between the empiricists and the rationalists. The empiricists believed that knowledge is acquired through experience alone, but the rationalists maintained that such knowledge is open to Cartesian doubt and that reason alone provides us with knowledge. Kant argues, however, that using reason without applying it to experience will only lead to illusions, while experience will be purely subjective without first being subsumed under pure reason.

Kant’s thought was very influential in Germany during his lifetime, moving philosophy beyond the debate between the rationalists and empiricists. The philosophers Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer saw themselves as correcting and expanding the Kantian system, thus bringing about various forms of German Idealism. Kant continues to be a major influence on philosophy to this day, influencing both Analytic and Continental philosophy.(less)

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Books by Immanuel Kant

Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Texts in the History of Philosophy)

Critique of Practical Reason (Texts in the History of Philosophy)

Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals/On a Supposed Right to Lie Because of Philanthropic Concerns

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“Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. ” — 213 people liked it

“Enlightenment is man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if it is not caused by lack of intelligence, but by lack of determination and courage to use one's intelligence without being guided by another. Sapere Aude! Have the courage to use your own intelligence! is therefore the motto of the enlightenment...” — 122 people liked it

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