THE
PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
KANT'S CRITICAL PROBLEM: WHAT IS IT IN ITSELF AND FOR US?
"The key to the right understanding of the entire Critique is to be sought for the most part in the introduction." — Brastberger.
APART from the introductory matter, with which we have in this article principally to deal, 1 Kant's greatest work, if we exclude the important closing chapters on method, falls into three main divisions, called, respectively, transcendental aesthetic, transcendental analytic, and transcendental dialectic. The first proves that space and time are a priori forms of sen- sibility, and explains from that fact the existence of mathe- matics as a pure or a priori sensuous science. The second shows there are a priori forms of thought, which are validly applied to appearances, but not to things in themselves ; and claims that on them rests a pure science of phenomenal nature, an a priori physic. The third exhibits the antinomies into which thinking falls when it applies the a priori forms of thought to things in themselves, and overcomes them by show- ing the subjective source and objective invalidity of meta- physics. I. In formulating the problem of the Critique in the preface to the first edition, Kant begins with a reference to the 1 The exposition in this article, unless otherwise specified, is based on the pref- aces and introductions of the two editions of the Critique, on the chapter on " The Discipline of Pure Reason in its Polemical Use," and the introduction to the Prolegomena. The references are, in German, to Hartenstein's edition, and, in English, to Max Miiller's translation of the Critique and Mahaffy's translation of the Prolegomena, the pages of the English works being enclosed by ( ). 129
