Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781) is the central text of modern philosophy. It represents a profond and challenging investigation into the nature of human reason, its knowledge and its illusions. Reason, Kant argues, is the seat of certain concepts that precede experience and make it possible, but we are not therefore entitled to draw conclusions about the natural world from these concepts. The Critique brings together two opposing schools of philosophy : rationalism, which grounds all our knowledge in reason, and empiricism, which traces all our knowledge to experience. Kant's transcendental idealism indicates a third way that goes for beyond these alternatives.
Marcus Weigelt's lucid re-working of Max Müller's classic translation male the Critique accessible to a new generation of readers. His informative introduction places the work in contains a bibliography and explanatory notes.
Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the workd for the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.
Emmanuel Kant was one of the most influential philosophers in the whole of Europe, who transformed Western thought with his examinations of reason and the nature of reality. In these writings he investigates human progress, civilization, morality and why, to be truly enlightened, we must all have the freedom and courage to use our own intellect.
