The preface of first edition. Kemp smith.

In the latter part of the eighteenth century metaphysics had fallen, as Kant states, into disrepute. The
wonderful success with which the mathematical and natural sciences were being developed served
only to emphasize by contrast the ineffectiveness of the metaphysical disciplines. Indifference to
philosophy was the inevitable outcome, and was due, not to levity, but to the matured judgment of
the age, which refused to be any longer put off with such pretended knowledge. Pp. 116
He classifies philosophies as dogmatic and skeptical; and under the latter rubric he includes all
empirical systems. Empiricism and skepticism he interprets as practically synonymous terms. The
defect of the dogmatists is that they have not critically examined their methods of procedure, and in
the absence of adequate distinction between appearance and reality have interpreted the latter in
terms of the former. The defect of the empiricist and sceptics is that they have misrepresented the
nature of the faculty of reason, ignoring its claims and misreading its functions, and accordingly
have gone even further astray than their dogmatic opponents. Pp. 117.
Pure reason is the subject-matter of the enquiry; it is also the instrument through which the enquiry
is made Nothing empirical or merely hypothetical has any place in it, either as subject matter or as
method of argument. Pp. 118
The critique seeks only to deal with that faculty of reason which manifest itself to us within our own
minds.
Secondly, the critique also claims certainty, with the removal of everything empirical, and the
reduction of its subject matter to pure reason, all mere opinion or hypothesis is likewise eliminated.
Pp. 119.
This preface is misleading:
1) Kant is preoccupied almost exclusively with the problems of meta physics in the strict
ontological sense, that is to say, with the problems of the dialectic. The problems of
analytic, which is the very heart of the critique, are almost entirely ignored.
2) Kant fails to indicate the more empirical features of his new critical standpoints. Since
ultimate reality is supersensuous, metaphysics, as above conceived, can have no instrument
save pure reason. The subjects of its enquiry, God, freedom, and immortality, if they are to
be known at all, can be determined only through a priori speculation.
In the a priori forms of experience, and there alone, can metaphysics hope to find a basis, if any
basis is really discoverable.
How much we can hope to achieve by reason, when all the material and assistance of experience is
taken away.
Prolegomena Anhang. Pp. 147 The position of all genuine idealists form Eleatics to Berkeley is
contained in this formula: all cognition through the senses and experience is nothing but mere
illusion, and only in the ideas of pure understanding and reason is there truth. (…) All cognition og
things solely from pure understanding or pure reason is nothing but mere illusion, and only in
experience is there truth.
Pure reason is a defective an instrument of knowledge as is factual experience. Though the primary
aim of metaphysics is to determine our relation to the absolutely real, and though that can only be
done by first determining the nature and possible scope of a priori principles, such principles are
found on investigation to possess only empirical validity. The central question of the critique thus
becomes of the validity of their empirical employment.
a) Prescribed by the very nature of reason itself. Metaphysics as a natural disposition, and its
questions are not therefore merely artificial.
b) Dogmatism. A dogmatist is one who assumes that human reason can comprehend ultimate
reality, and who proceeds upon this assumption.
 Rationalism: As a rationalist they hold that it is possible to determine form pure a
priori principles the ultimate nature of god, of the soul, and of the material
universe.
 Realism: They are realists in that they assert that by human thought the complete
nature of objective reality can be determined.
 Transcendence: Through pure thought they go out beyond the sensible and
determine the super sensuous.
c) Skepticism: Kant, as above stated regards it as being in effect equivalent to empiricism)
may similarly be defined through the three terms:
 Empiricism: he must reduce knowledge to sense-experience.
 Subjectivism: The knowledge is infected by subjective conditions.
 Immanence: through sensation we cannot hope to determine the nature of the
objectively real.
d) Criticism. Rationalism, subjectivism (phenomenalism), immanence. It agrees with
dogmatism in maintaining that only through a priori principles can true knowledge be
obtained. Such knowledge is, however, subjective (phenomenalism), and for that reason it
is also only of immanent application; knowledge is possible only in the sphere of sense
experience. 126 pp.
Dogmatism claims that knowledge arises independently of experience and extends beyond in it.
Empiricism holds that knowledge arises out of sense experience and is valid only within it.
Criticism teaches that knowledge arises independently of particular experience but is valid only for
experience.
Locke –Cf A86=B119; A270=27; B127.