Tīrā prāta kritika

by Imanuels Kants

Other authorsAtis Rolavs (Translator)
Hardcover, 1931

Status

Available

Call number

121

Collection

Publication

Rīga : Rolavs, 1931-1934.

Description

Philosophy. Nonfiction. HTML: The Critique of Pure Reason is one of the seminal texts of Western philosophy, and the first of Kant's three Critiques. In it he takes up Hume's argument that cause and effect cannot be experienced by the senses. Hume argued that we experience events one after the other, but not that one event is caused by the preceding event. Kant argues that synthetic, rather than analytic thinking is needed, and addresses the problem of thinking synthetically without relying on the empirical method..

User reviews

LibraryThing member WalkerMedia
Having been awakened from his "dogmatic slumber" by reading Hume, Kant undertakes to defend his faith in both God and rationality from the nightmarish skepticism Hume explored. In the end, he borrowed most conceptual categories from Aristotle, buried them in new terminology and some of the best
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obfuscation known to Western philosophy, and proceeded to tell himself a nice bedtime story so that he could go back to peaceful sleep. It's a shame, because he was on to something. Modern psychological research is only confirming the reality of some of the conceptual categories Kant describes, locked inside the human nervous system a priori to experience. To unravel the sophistry of his extended argument requires cutting through the blurriness to clearly see the premises he so carefully hides. To understand much of Western philosophy which follows, some notion of Kant's argument is necessary. Unless, however, you are interested in theology, the second part of this book may be safely skipped.
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LibraryThing member silea
This is my first attempt to read Kant, as none of the various philosophy courses i took ever directly referenced his material, so i can't say with certainty whether the flaw i'm about to cite is the fault of Kant, the translator, or perhaps both. Regardless, here is my one-sentence review of this
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book:

A typical sentence in this book may contain 32 words, adorned with no fewer than 7 commas (for reference, my rather long and comma-ridden sentence above has 45 words and only 4 commas).
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LibraryThing member jpsnow
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
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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 forward. He also introduces the implications of a transcendental philosophy, which is necessary groundwork toward bridging the real and the spiritual.
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LibraryThing member chaosmogony
To call Kant "dense" is an understatement on par with saying the same about the core of a neutron star. Kant's critiques are not easy going, but the bright side is that his description of the human condition, an attempt to restore science and knowledge in a world transformed by Newton and Hume, is
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worth the effort.

The Critique of Pure Reason is a (perhaps the) watershed in Western philosophy, rightly likened to Kant's own description of a "Copernican revolution" in thought. The book is Kant's groundwork for knowledge itself: the nature of space and time and logic as preconditions for knowledge, shared among all humans, at the cost of sacrificing metaphysics to the transcendental realm of the "unconditioned". In exchange, we restore free will, morality, and (for those so inclined) God to the world of human existence.

Kant is very much the "lawyer" and the detail-man, and his almost obsessive need to sort human nature into a concrete taxonomy is perhaps the weakest part of the work. Still, Kant's division into the phenomenal and the noumenal, the human and the unconditioned, remains foundational, and to understand Kant's argument here is to understand everything that comes after in the Continental tradition. Even if you disagree with Kant's conclusions, there is a wealth of thought to draw upon, from Kant's conception of human existence to his ideas on "things in themselves", morality, and freedom.

The Critiques are a chore, but the kind of chore that pays off dividends.
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LibraryThing member franksvalli
I accidentally wandered into the Biola University bookstore today and purchased this darn thing. Incidentally (and eccentrically), I have two copies of the Great Books of the Western World on Kant (the second one was an accidental buy), and I think the text is too small to enjoy it. I also don't
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want to mark it up, so this paperback will probably be the one I mark up. I'm planning on going through this slowly, like I'm doing with Quine's Logic book right now.
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LibraryThing member mossj
Reads better with no distractions. I sometimes have to re-read Kant numerous times before I understand what he's trying to promulgate.
LibraryThing member dizzyjosh
Fantastic translation, contains A and B editions of the work. The abstract image on the front cover may or may not relate to the contents of the book-- but are the noumena the center or the outer layer?
LibraryThing member LisaMaria_C
The Critique of Pure Reason is listed among Good Reading’s 100 Significant Books. I found reading through that list was a great education--as valuable as college, and I’ve learned enormously from reading it--much more aware of the underpinnings of Western culture. That’s why I stuck though
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this, even though I’d have ordinarily turned away from this book from the very first paragraph:

Our reason has this peculiar fate that, with reference to one class of its knowledge, it is always troubled with questions which cannot be ignored, because they spring from the very nature of reason, and which cannot be answered, because they transcend the powers of human reason.

OK, right there I thought this is not a guy really worthy of spending my time with, because if something transcends the powers of human reason, you can’t argue for it, so what’s the point of philosophy? The rest of the preface explains he’s going to resort to “pure reason”--by which he means reason without resort to experience. And without experience, how can we check out premises? I guess that makes me an empiricist, but that just there made me skeptical of learning much from Kant before I’d ever gotten beyond the Preface. Kant’s tone also grated on me more than any philosopher I’d ever read--much, much more than Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Locke... Take this from the Preface:

But I beg to remind him that, if my subjective deduction does not produce in his mind the conviction of its certitude at which I aimed, the objective deduction, with which alone the present work is properly concerned, is in every respect satisfactory.

And that’s just the impression from the first dozens of pages of a book over 400 pages long. Once I dove into Kant’s main argument, it was easy to get lost. I don’t think he’s quite as difficult as Spinoza, but then I was far more sympathetic to Spinoza’s arguments and tone, which helped me see his Ethics through. I probably have just about as much philosophical disagreement with Plato, but Plato is a very engaging writer--truly--I found The Republic, The Symposium, The Apology and the other dialogues very engaging reads. But Kant combines the thorny prose of Spinoza with a philosophy even more inimical to me than Plato. Yet I did find pushing through much of this valuable--for the same reason as the other works on the list. My rating reflects that I hated the style and substance of Kant--but that doesn't mean I don't think the ideas aren't important to grasp. Because I can see Kant’s lines of argument descending from Plato’s Allegory of the Cave in The Republic and threaded through so many other thinkers after him:

The light dove, in free flight cutting through the air the resistance of which it feels, could get the idea that it could do even better in airless space. Likewise, Plato abandoned the world of the senses because it posed so many hindrances for the understanding, and dared to go beyond it on the wings of the ideas, in the empty space of pure understanding.
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LibraryThing member KhanBuriKhan
A rigorous translation of the original 2nd edition. Kant's German is "difficult reading" even for accomplished German scholars.
LibraryThing member gottfried_leibniz
Kant is systematic, thorough. I like his way of writing. He is intense, And dense, part of the reasons is because of concepts, definitions. However, I do not think he is the most difficult writer. The brilliant, deepest thinker so far I know is Jonathan Edwards. Kant is crucial to modern
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Philosophy, definitely worth reading his piece if you enjoy Philosophy.

The important things I learnt from this book was that, Knowledge we gain is systematized through our senses. Yes, our knowledge starts from experience but Kant does not claim that every knowledge must be from experience alone or through reason alone. He calls his system transcendental knowledge, which does not mean beyond our experience but it means knowledge which both synthetical and a priori.

Imagine you are wearing a blue glasses, And looking at the world. The world will be blue through your eyes, which you will never get to find out. Therefore, we are unable to completely understand the world. He classifies these as Noumena and Phenomena. Noumena is the reality, the thing itself and Phenomena is the appearance. Space and time constitute as a foundation for everything. His writings on cosmological, ontological arguments were impressive and makes me think more.


"Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind" - Kant
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LibraryThing member gottfried_leibniz
Kant is systematic, thorough. I like his way of writing. He is intense, And dense, part of the reasons is because of concepts, definitions. However, I do not think he is the most difficult writer. The brilliant, deepest thinker so far I know is Jonathan Edwards. Kant is crucial to modern
Show More
Philosophy, definitely worth reading his piece if you enjoy Philosophy.

The important things I learnt from this book was that, Knowledge we gain is systematized through our senses. Yes, our knowledge starts from experience but Kant does not claim that every knowledge must be from experience alone or through reason alone. He calls his system transcendental knowledge, which does not mean beyond our experience but it means knowledge which both synthetical and a priori.

Imagine you are wearing a blue glasses, And looking at the world. The world will be blue through your eyes, which you will never get to find out. Therefore, we are unable to completely understand the world. He classifies these as Noumena and Phenomena. Noumena is the reality, the thing itself and Phenomena is the appearance. Space and time constitute as a foundation for everything. His writings on cosmological, ontological arguments were impressive and makes me think more.


"Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind" - Kant
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LibraryThing member DanielSTJ
Far too complex. Nearly unreadable for the average reader.
LibraryThing member MyFathersDragon
Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is an analysis of the concept of metaphysics. I have read from English translations, not the original German. I don’t think I’m up to reading on this topic in German, yet. I enjoyed the English translation; I like logic. I was fascinated by Ancient Greek
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philosophy starting when I was 12 or 13 years old, but it took me quite a few years before I read any modern philosophy. I can see why this is a significant book in modern philosophy that should be read. I should have read it earlier and would recommend it to others interested in philosophy.
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Language

Original language

German

Original publication date

1781

Physical description

336, 343 p.; 22 cm

Pages

336; 343

Other editions

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