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《纯粹理性批判THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON》

作者：Immanuel Kant伊曼纽尔•康德 【完结】

本书是康德三大批判著作、也是其全部哲学著述中意义最为特殊和重大的巨著，它改变了整个西方哲学前进发展的方向和进程。康德花了11年的时间完成，1781年初版，1787年再版。 贯彻始终的根本指导思想就是：通过对理性本身、即人类先天认识能力的批判考察，确定它有哪些先天的、即具有普遍性和必然性的要素，以及这些要素的来源、功能、条件、范围和界限，从而确定它能认识什么和不能认识什么，在这基础上对形而上学的命运和前途作出最终的判决和规定，其使命是为真正的、作为科学的形而上学提供坚实可靠的基础。全书约有40余万字，除了序言和一个总的导言外，分为“先验要素论”和“先验方法论” 。

1781

THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON

by Immanuel Kant

translated by J. M. D. Meiklejohn

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION, 1781

Human reason, in one sphere of its cognition, is called upon to

consider questions, which it cannot decline, as they are presented

by its own nature, but which it cannot answer, as they transcend every

faculty of the mind.

It falls into this difficulty without any fault of its own. It

begins with principles, which cannot be dispensed with in the field of

experience, and the truth and sufficiency of which are, at the same

time, insured by experience. With these principles it rises, in

obedience to the laws of its own nature, to ever higher and more

remote conditions. But it quickly discovers that, in this way, its

labours must remain ever incomplete, because new questions never cease

to present themselves; and thus it finds itself compelled to have

recourse to principles which transcend the region of experience, while

they are regarded by common sense without distrust. It thus falls into

confusion and contradictions, from which it conjectures the presence

of latent errors, which, however, it is unable to discover, because

the principles it employs, transcending the limits of experience,

cannot be tested by that criterion. The arena of these endless

contests is called Metaphysic.

Time was, when she was the queen of all the sciences; and, if we

take the will for the deed, she certainly deserves, so far as

regards the high importance of her object-matter, this title of

honour. Now, it is the fashion of the time to heap contempt and

scorn upon her; and the matron mourns, forlorn and forsaken, like

Hecuba:

Modo maxima rerum,

Tot generis, natisque potens...

Nunc trahor exul, inops.*

*Ovid, Metamorphoses. [xiii, "But late on the pinnacle of fame,

strong in my many sons. now exiled, penniless."]

At first, her government, under the administration of the

dogmatists, was an absolute despotism. But, as the legislative

continued to show traces of the ancient barbaric rule, her empire

gradually broke up, and intestine wars introduced the reign of

anarchy; while the sceptics, like nomadic tribes, who hate a permanent

habitation and settled mode of living, attacked from time to time

those who had organized themselves into civil communities. But their

number was, very happily, small; and thus they could not entirely

put a stop to the exertions of those who persisted in raising new

edifices, although on no settled or uniform plan. In recent times

the hope dawned upon us of seeing those disputes settled, and the

legitimacy of her claims established by a kind of physiology of the

human understanding- that of the celebrated Locke. But it was found

that- although it was affirmed that this so-called queen could not

refer her descent to any higher source than that of common experience,

a circumstance which necessarily brought suspicion on her claims- as

this genealogy was incorrect, she persisted in the advancement of

her claims to sovereignty. Thus metaphysics necessarily fell back into

the antiquated and rotten constitution of dogmatism, and again

became obnoxious to the contempt from which efforts had been made to

save it. At present, as all methods, according to the general

persuasion, have been tried in vain, there reigns nought but weariness

and complete indifferentism- the mother of chaos and night in the

scientific world, but at the same time the source of, or at least

the prelude to, the re-creation and reinstallation of a science,

when it has fallen into confusion, obscurity, and disuse from ill

directed effort.

For it is in reality vain to profess indifference in regard to

such inquiries, the object of which cannot be indifferent to humanity.

Besides, these pretended indifferentists, however much they may try to

disguise themselves by the assumption of a popular style and by

changes on the language of the schools, unavoidably fall into

metaphysical declarations and propositions, which they profess to

regard with so much contempt. At the same time, this indifference,

which has arisen in the world of science, and which relates to that

kind of knowledge which we should wish to see destroyed the last, is a

phenomenon that well deserves our attention and reflection. It is

plainly not the effect of the levity, but of the matured judgement* of

the age, which refuses to be any longer entertained with illusory

knowledge, It is, in fact, a call to reason, again to undertake the

most laborious of all tasks- that of self-examination- and to

establish a tribunal, which may secure it in its well-grounded claims,

while it pronounces against all baseless assumptions and

pretensions, not in an arbitrary manner, but according to its own

eternal and unchangeable laws. This tribunal is nothing less than

the critical investigation of pure reason.

*We very often hear complaints of the shallowness of the present

age, and of the decay of profound science. But I do not think that

those which rest upon a secure foundation, such as mathematics,

physical science, etc., in the least deserve this reproach, but that

they rather maintain their ancient fame, and in the latter case,

indeed, far surpass it. The same would be the case with the other

kinds of cognition, if their principles were but firmly established.

In the absence of this security, indifference, doubt, and finally,

severe criticism are rather signs of a profound habit of thought.

Our age is the age of criticism, to which everything must be

subjected. The sacredness of religion, and the authority of

legislation, are by many regarded as grounds of exemption from the

examination of this tribunal. But, if they on they are exempted,

they become the subjects of just suspicion, and cannot lay claim to

sincere respect, which reason accords only to that which has stood the

test of a free and public examination.

I do not mean by this a criticism of books and systems, but a

critical inquiry into the faculty of reason, with reference to the

cognitions to which it strives to attain without the aid of

experience; in other words, the solution of the question regarding the

possibility or impossibility of metaphysics, and the determination

of the origin, as well as of the extent and limits of this science.

All this must be done on the basis of principles.

This path- the only one now remaining- has been entered upon by

me; and I flatter myself that I have, in this way, discovered the

cause of- and consequently the mode of removing- all the errors

which have hitherto set reason at variance with itself, in the

sphere of non-empirical thought. I have not returned an evasive answer

to the questions of reason, by alleging the inability and limitation

of the faculties of the mind; I have, on the contrary, examined them

completely in the light of principles, and, after having discovered

the cause of the doubts and contradictions into which reason fell,

have solved them to its perfect satisfaction. It is true, these

questions have not been solved as dogmatism, in its vain fancies and

desires, had expected; for it can only be satisfied by the exercise of

magical arts, and of these I have no knowledge. But neither do these

come within the compass of our mental powers; and it was the duty of

philosophy to destroy the illusions which had their origin in

misconceptions, whatever darling hopes and valued expectations may

be ruined by its explanations. My chief aim in this work has been

thoroughness; and I make bold to say that there is not a single

metaphysical problem that does not find its solution, or at least

the key to its solution, here. Pure reason is a perfect unity; and

therefore, if the if the principle presented by it prove to be

insufficient for the solution of even a single one of those

questions to which the very nature of reason gives birth, we must

reject it, as we could not be perfectly certain of its sufficiency

in the case of the others.

While I say this, I think I see upon the countenance of the reader

signs of dissatisfaction mingled with contempt, when he hears

declarations which sound so boastful and extravagant; and yet they are

beyond comparison more moderate than those advanced by the commonest

author of the commonest philosophical programme, in which the

dogmatist professes to demonstrate the simple nature of the soul, or

the necessity of a primal being. Such a dogmatist promises to extend

human knowledge beyond the limits of possible experience; while I

humbly confess that this is completely beyond my power. Instead of any

such attempt, I confine myself to the examination of reason alone

and its pure thought; and I do not need to seek far for the

sum-total of its cognition, because it has its seat in my own mind.

Besides, common logic presents me with a complete and systematic

catalogue of all the simple operations of reason; and it is my task to

answer the question how far reason can go, without the material

presented and the aid furnished by experience.

So much for the completeness and thoroughness necessary in the

execution of the present task. The aims set before us are not

arbitrarily proposed, but are imposed upon us by the nature of

cognition itself.

The above remarks relate to the matter of our critical inquiry. As

regards the form, there are two indispensable conditions, which any

one who undertakes so difficult a task as that of a critique of pure

reason, is bound to fulfil. These conditions are certitude and

clearness.

As regards certitude, I have fully convinced myself that, in this

sphere of thought, opinion is perfectly inadmissible, and that

everything which bears the least semblance of an hypothesis must be

excluded, as 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