The Critique of Pure Reason | Page 3

of no
value in such discussions. For it is a necessary condition of every
cognition that is to be established upon a priori grounds that it shall be
held to be absolutely necessary; much more is this the case with an
attempt to determine all pure a priori cognition, and to furnish the
standard--and consequently an example-- of all apodeictic
(philosophical) certitude. Whether I have succeeded in what I professed
to do, it is for the reader to determine; it is the author's business merely
to adduce grounds and reasons, without determining what influence
these ought to have on the mind of his judges. But, lest anything he
may have said may become the innocent cause of doubt in their minds,
or tend to weaken the effect which his arguments might otherwise
produce--he may be allowed to point out those passages which may
occasion mistrust or difficulty, although these do not concern the main
purpose of the present work. He does this solely with the view of
removing from the mind of the reader any doubts which might affect
his judgement of the work as a whole, and in regard to its ultimate aim.
I know no investigations more necessary for a full insight into the
nature of the faculty which we call understanding, and at the same time
for the determination of the rules and limits of its use, than those
undertaken in the second chapter of the "Transcendental Analytic,"
under the title of "Deduction of the Pure Conceptions of the
Understanding"; and they have also cost me by far the greatest

labour--labour which, I hope, will not remain uncompensated. The
view there taken, which goes somewhat deeply into the subject, has
two sides, The one relates to the objects of the pure understanding, and
is intended to demonstrate and to render comprehensible the objective
validity of its a priori conceptions; and it forms for this reason an
essential part of the Critique. The other considers the pure
understanding itself, its possibility and its powers of cognition--that is,
from a subjective point of view; and, although this exposition is of
great importance, it does not belong essentially to the main purpose of
the work, because the grand question is what and how much can reason
and understanding, apart from experience, cognize, and not, how is the
faculty of thought itself possible? As the latter is an inquiry into the
cause of a given effect, and has thus in it some semblance of an
hypothesis (although, as I shall show on another occasion, this is really
not the fact), it would seem that, in the present instance, I had allowed
myself to enounce a mere opinion, and that the reader must therefore be
at liberty to hold a different opinion. 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.
As regards clearness, the reader has a right to demand, in the first place,
discursive or logical clearness, that is, on the basis of conceptions, and,
secondly, intuitive or aesthetic clearness, by means of intuitions, that is,
by examples or other modes of illustration in concreto. I have done
what I could for the first kind of intelligibility. This was essential to my
purpose; and it thus became the accidental cause of my inability to do
complete justice to the second requirement. I have been almost always
at a loss, during the progress of this work, how to settle this question.
Examples and illustrations always appeared to me necessary, and, in
the first sketch of the Critique, naturally fell into their proper places.
But I very soon became aware of the magnitude of my task, and the
numerous problems with which I should be engaged; and, as I
perceived that this critical investigation would, even if delivered in the
driest scholastic manner, be far from being brief, I found it unadvisable
to enlarge it still more with examples and explanations, which are

necessary only from a popular point of view. I was induced to take this
course from the consideration also that the present work is not intended
for popular use, that those devoted to science do not require such helps,
although they are always acceptable, and that they would have
materially interfered with my present purpose. Abbe Terrasson remarks
with great justice that, if we estimate the size of a work, not from the
number of its pages, but from the time which we require to make
ourselves master of it, it may be said of many a book that it would be
much shorter, if it were not so short. On the other hand, as regards the