Kant's Prolegomena and Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science
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BOHN'S PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY.
KANT'S PROLEGOMENA, &c.
KANT'S PROLEGOMENA
AND
METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS
OF NATURAL SCIENCE.
TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL,
WITH A BIOGRAPHY AND INTRODUCTION,
BY
ERNEST BELFORT BAX,
AUTHOR OF "JEAN PAUL MARAT: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH," &c.
WITH A PORTRAIT OF KANT
LONDON: GEORGE BELL AND SONS, YORK STREET,
COVENT GARDEN.
1883.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED.
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
PREFACE.
The growing interest taken in philosophy in this country has led to the issue of the present volume of "Bonn's Philosophical Library," containing the presentation for the first time to the British public of one work, important alike to the votary of physical science and of philosophy, and an entirely fresh translation of another which is absolutely indispensable at least to the philosophical student of Kant.
Only two English translations of the "Prolegomena" have hitherto been published. The first (a very bad one), by John Richardson, appeared in 1818, and has been out of print for many years past. The second (based on the last-mentioned) forms one of the volumes in Professor Mahaffy's series entitled, "Kant's Critical Philosophy for English Readers," and while avowedly a somewhat free rendering, conveys the sense of the original fairly well, but its relatively high price places it beyond the reach of many persons. The present translation aims at giving, as far as possible, the ipsissima verba of Kant. No attempt has been made to convert the cumbrous German of the original into elegant English. Even the form and length of the sentences have been retained wherever possible, as it has been thought preferable to place before the reader Kant himself, with all his lack of literary polish, rather than any mere paraphrase of Kant.
Words not contained in the original are indicated by through the individual mind, the object of empirical psychology; (II.) the unity of apperception, which indicates the first moment of the differentiation of form from matter (an important antithesis that Kant rehabilitated), that is, the first moment of the possibility of consciousness; and (III.) finally the immanent noumenon or fundamental agency of which consciousness itself with all its momenta, is the determination. This last, although tacitly assumed throughout, and frequently referred to in terms of psychology as the "mind," (das Gemüth), it was reserved for Kant's successors to definitively fix.
Perhaps the greatest service of Kant is the differentiation of the consciousness-in-general, which is constitutive of reality, or in other words, is productive of the synthesis of experience, from the psychological consciousness or mind of the individual qua individual, which is merely reproductive of this synthesis. This is Kant's great advance upon Berkeley and Hume, who, trained in the psychological school of Locke, failed to distinguish between metaphysics, or theory of knowledge—i.e., the science of the possibility of synthetic or productive experience, in other words, of consciousness-in-general—and psychology, the science of the reproduction of this synthesis in the experience of the individual. Berkeley demolished the scholastic substance or material substratum apart from consciousness, but having done so was confronted with the paradox that he had resolved objective reality into subjective ideality. That this absurdity was only apparent he felt, but was unable to point out where lay the source of the appearance for the reason above stated, namely, his inability to distinguish between consciousness quâ consciousness, and its reflection in mind.
The Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft has never before appeared in an English form. The same remarks, as regards the aim and character of the translation, will apply to this work as to the Prolegomena. I must ask, however, for some indulgence in this case for an occasional barbarism (e.g., "a plurality of the real, outside one another,") owing to the difficulty of rendering Kant's meaning adequately in all cases by good English. In the Anfangsgründe Kant seems to have surpassed himself in clumsiness and obscurity of style. In several sentences the verb is wanting, and others by the omission of a negative particle or a similar carelessness, make precisely the reverse sense to that, judging by the context, obviously intended.
The treatise in question is of especial interest in relation to modern speculation on the data of physical science, and particularly as to the ultimate constitution of matter, and may be profitably studied in conjunction with such works as Professor Wurtz's, "Atomic Theory," Mr. Stallo's "Concepts of Modern Physics," and Mr. Herbert Spencer's "First Principles." Written in 1786, just one year before the publication of the second edition of the "Critique," it belongs to the maturest period of Kant's philosophical activity. It may be of interest to allude to the fact that since the introductory portion of the present volume was in the press the manuscript treatise of Kant entitled, Uebergang von den Metaphysischen Anfangsgrûnde der Naturwissenschaft zur Physik, "Transition from the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science to Physics," has been disinterred and published in the Altpreussische Monatshefte for the year 1882. It should be added that the edition used, both in the case of the Prolegomena and the Anfangsgründe, is that of the collected works by Kirchmann, which, although not without flaw, is probably on the whole the most accurate we possess.
A short biographical sketch of Kant has been supplied by way of introduction to the volume. This is founded chiefly on the old sources, Wasianski, Borowski, Jachmann, Reicke. Schubert, &c. The biography is supplemented by a chapter dealing with Kant's position in the evolution of thought, which, although necessarily to a large extent a mere bald outline, it has been thought might possibly prove suggestive to students, and stimulative to independent research in some of the directions indicated.
LIST OF CONTENTS.
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lxxii | |
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1 | |
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135
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ERRATA.
Page" 171, 173, 175, (heading) for "Dynanics" read "Dynamics"
Page" 179, for "Cases" read "Distance"
Page" 179, for "Deduciable" read "Deducibly"
Page" 10, sixth line from top, delete "a"
This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content.
| Original: |
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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| Translation: |
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929. The longest-living author of this work died in 1926, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 97 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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