Prolegomena: To Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Present Itself as a Science (Philosophy Classics) - Softcover

Immanuel Kant

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0719004926 ISBN 13: 9780719004926

Publisher: Manchester University Press, 1953

Synopsis

This is the 1971 paperback reprinted edition (155pp, ISBN 0719004926) of Immanuel Kant’s ‘Prolegomena' with an Introduction and Notes by Peter G. Lucas’. Contents: Translator's Preface; Introduction: Origin of the Prolegomena; Basis of the Text; Principles of Translation; Previous Translations into English. Aids to Study: The Structure of the Prolegomena in relation to the Critique of Pure Reason; Comparative Table of the Prolegomena and the Critique; Table of Special Terms; Notes Concerning the Translations of Certain Terms; Analytical Table of Contents; Index of Names; The Prolegomena itself. About the Prolegomena: The Critique of Pure Reason was published in the early summer of 1781, the Prolegomena about Easter, 1783. The Prolegomena is Kant's own guide (as he called it) to the first edition and the source of some of the changes in the 2nd edition. For the modern reader, they have a twofold value - they were written to provide a short survey of the main points in the Critique, making it less difficult to understand. to enable them to serve this purpose again is the main justification for this new (1971) version. The book was not however to be a mere summary or simplification of the Critique, but an approach to the subject by a new method, which he called 'analytic' in contrast to the 'synthetic method' of the Critique. It started with the known and proceeded to the unknown. The existence and universal validity of mathematics and natural science, and of metaphysics 'as a natural disposition', are taken for granted, thereby avoiding a large quantity of argument that was needed in the Critique, and on this basis, the ‘possibility’ of mathematics, natural science and a future scientific metaphysics is shown. But Kant seems to have subsequently realised that this kind of exposition had a place to fill in the Critique itself and he incorporated matter from the Prolegomena (sometimes verbatim)

Edition details

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Publication date: 1953
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0719004926
• ISBN 13: 9780719004926
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 196
• Editor: G. H. R. Parkinson