Philosophic Classics From Plato to Derrida

840 IMMANUELKANT

of reason, where its speculative use in metaphysics must necessarily be at one with its

practical use in morals. Hence the unavoidable dialectic of pure reason, considered in

metaphysics as a natural tendency, deserves to be explained not as a mere illusion, which

is to be removed, but also, if possible, as a natural provision as regards its end, though

this task, a work of supererogation, cannot justly be assigned to metaphysics proper.

The solutions of these questions which are treated in the Critique* should be

considered a second scholium, which, however, has a greater affinity with the subject of

metaphysics. For there certain rational principles are expounded which determine a priori

the order of nature or rather of the understanding, which seeks nature’s laws through expe-

rience. They seem to be constitutive and legislative with regard to experience, though they

spring from pure reason, which cannot be considered, like the understanding, as a principle

of possible experience. Now whether or not this harmony rests upon the fact that, just as

nature does not inhere in appearances or in their source (the sensibility) itself, but only in

the relation of the latter to the understanding, a thorough unity in applying the understand-

ing to bring about an entirety of all possible experience (in a system) can only belong to the

understanding when in relation to reason, with the consequence that experience is in this

way mediately subordinate to the legislation of reason—this question may be discussed

by those who desire to trace the nature of reason even beyond its use in metaphysics, into

the general principles, which will make a history of nature in general systematic. I have

presented this task as important, but not attempted its solution in the book itself.**

And thus I conclude the analytical solution of the main question which I had pro-

posed: “How is metaphysics in general possible?” by ascending from the data of its

actual use, as shown in its consequences, to the grounds of its possibility.

SOLUTION OF THEGENERALQUESTION OF THEPROLEGOMENA

How Is Metaphysics Possible as Science?

Metaphysics, as a natural disposition of reason, is actual; but if considered by

itself alone (as the analytical solution of the third principal question showed), dialecti-

cal and illusory. If we think of taking principles from it, and in using them follow the

natural, but on that account not less false, illusion, we can never produce science, but

only a vain dialectical art, in which one school may outdo another but none can ever

acquire a just and lasting approbation.

In order that as a science metaphysics may be entitled to claim, not mere fallacious

plausibility, but insight and conviction, a critique of reason itself must exhibit the whole

stock of a prioriconcepts, their division according to their various sources (sensibility,

understanding, and reason), together with a complete table of them, the analysis of all

these concepts, with all their consequences, and especially the possibility of synthetical

knowledge a prioriby means of a deduction of these concepts, the principles and the

bounds of their application, all in a complete system. Critique, therefore, and critique

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*Critique of Pure Reason,“Regulative Use of the Ideas of Pure Reason.”

**Throughout in the CritiqueI never lost sight of the plan not to neglect anything, were it ever so

recondite, that could render the inquiry into the nature of pure reason complete. Everybody may afterward

carry his research as far as he pleases, when he has been merely shown what yet remains to be done. This can

reasonably be expected of him who has made it his business to survey the whole field, in order to consign it to

others for future cultivation and allotment. And to this branch both the scholia belong, which will hardly

recommend themselves because of their dryness to amateurs, and hence are added here for connoisseurs only.

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