Handout # 1 on Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena) Phil 202, Dr.

Tobias Hoffmann, 03/25/02

Preface: The point of departure and the intention of the Prolegomena (IV:255–264)
For Hume, a priori knowledge is limited to reasoning concerning quantity or number (mathe-
matical or geometrical knowledge). All questions of matter of fact are only knowable by empirical
knowledge (i. e. by a posteriori knowledge) (cf. Enquiry, ed. E. Steinberg, p. 114). Also the knowl-
edge of cause and effect is empirical: we know about this relation from experience, because we
are used to seeing the conjunction between two events; yet we do not understand their connection.
Thus, metaphysics seems to be impossible, because we don’t have any understanding about the
necessity of the connection between cause and effect, but we only have experimental, sensible, sub-
jective knowledge about the factuality of their conjunction (see Kant’s account of Hume in Prole-
gomena, ed. J. W. Ellington, Akademie-Ausgabe IV:257–258).
Hume’s criticism awakens Kant from his “dogmatic slumber” (IV:260): he doesn’t take for
granted that we have metaphysical knowledge, but now asks about its possibility: “Is metaphysics
possible?” (cf. IV:256, IV:274).
Kant’s objective in the Prolegomena (as in his Critique of Pure Reason) is to answer this question.
In the light of Hume’s criticism, he calls for a “radical reform, or rather a rebirth” of metaphysics
(IV:257). While Hume claims that knowledge about cause and effect is not a priori knowledge
(and thus not metaphysical knowledge), Kant wants to show that the concept of cause and effect
(as well as several other “metaphysical concepts”) does allow for a priori knowledge (cf. IV:260).

Preamble: How is metaphysics as cognition from pure reason possible? (IV:265–280)

What is metaphysics?
1. Its mode of knowledge. Kant describes metaphysics mainly by its peculiar type of knowledge.
Only a priori knowledge, not empirical knowledge is metaphysical knowledge. Both its basic con-
cepts (i. e. cause, substance, existence, possibility, necessity etc., cf. § 21, IV:303) and its basic propo-
sitions (i. e. sentences, e. g. “where there is an effect, there must be a cause” etc.) must not be de-
rived from experience, but from a priori cognition, i. e. from “pure understanding” or “pure
reason”. More explicitly, Kant describes what metaphysics is about:
“[M]etaphysics is properly concerned with synthetic propositions a priori, and these alone
constitute its end … [T]he generation of a priori cognition by intuition as well as by con-
cepts, and also of synthetic propositions a priori in philosophical cognition, constitutes the
essential content of metaphysics.” (§ 2, IV:274).
In short, he describes metaphysics as “pure philosophical cognition” (§ 1, IV:265–266). His in-
sistence on the need of “a priori knowledge” or (which is the same), “pure cognition”, for meta-
physics is motivated by the idea that only this type of knowledge, and not empirical knowledge
affords us with knowledge about necessary truths (§ 2, IV:268; § 6, IV:280)
2. Its content. In passing, he also describes the main content of metaphysics: it is knowledge
of a highest being, and of a future existence, proved from principles of pure reason (§ 4, IV:273).
What are “synthetic propositions a priori”?
In short, synthetic propositions a priori are sentences by which we obtain an “extension of
knowledge” (as opposed to merely analytic knowledge), while still being in the realm of the pure
understanding, as opposed to empirical knowledge.
Kant distinguishes not only between a priori and a posteriori judgments (or propositions), or
between knowledge from pure understanding vs. emprical knowledge (which distinction is
analogous, though not identical with the former), but moreover between analytic judgments
(which are merely explicative, adding nothing to the content of cognition) and synthetic judg-
ments (which are ampliative, increasing the given cognition) (§ 2, IV:266).
 “Analytic judgments express nothing in the predicate but what has been already actually
thought in the concept of the subject, thought not so clearly and with the same consciousness.”
(§ 2, IV:266). Kant’s examples are: “All bodies are extended”, “Gold is a yellow metal” (§ 2,
IV:266–267). More examples: “The circle is round”, “Man is an animal endowed with reason”,
“The whole is greater than its part”. Analytical judgments depend entirely on the principle of
contradiction: the predicate cannot be denied of the subject without contradiction (§ 2, IV:267)
(e. g., “The circle is not round” makes no sense).
In synthetic judgments, the predicate expresses something not said in the subject, and thus
amplifies the knowledge by adding something to the concept of the subject. Kant’s examples are:
“All bodies have weight” (cf. § 2, IV:267), “7+5=12” (§ 2, IV:268–269), “A straight line is the short-
est path between two points” (cf. § 2, IV, 269). Further examples: “The circle has a radius of 6
inches”, “This man is sick.” Synthetic judgments honor the principle of contradiction, but go be-
yond it: “We must go beyond these concepts by calling to our aid some intuition corresponding to
one of them” (§ 2, IV:269). To deny the predicate of the subject may be false, but not contradic-
tory, i. e. the pure concept of “body”, by definition, doesn’t entail weight, but only extension.
The a priori / a posteriori distinction can be combined with the analytic-synthetic distinction:
a priori & analytic judgments a posteriori & analytic judgments
judgments belonging to metaphysics (“all analytic judgments… are… a priori
Example: “All bodies are extended” cognitions”, § 2, IV:267)
ignored these!

a priori & synthetic judgments a posteriori & synthetic judgments

David Hume

judgments belonging to metaphysics, judgments from experience

metaphysical judgments, (i. e. empirical knowledge)
mathematical and geometrical judgments Example: “All bodies have weight.”
Examples: “7+5=12”, “A straight line
is the shortest path between two points”

The question of the possibility of metaphysics

Kant holds a middle position between dogmatism (as represented by his teachers, Wolff and
Baumgarten) and skepticism (as laid out by Hume):
“Weary therefore of dogmatism, which teaches us nothing, and of skepticism, which does
not even promise us anything, not even to rest in permitted ignorance; disquieted by the
importance of knowledge so much needed; and, lastly, rendered suspicious by long expe-
rience of all knowledge which we believe we possess or which offers itself under the title of
pure reason – we have left but one critical question upon whose answer depends our fu-
ture conduct, viz., is metaphysics at all possible? (§ 4, IV:274).
The possibility of metaphysics rests on this question:
“How are synthetic propositions a priori possible?” (§ 5, IV:276, cf. IV:277).
If we answer this question, we avoid both dogmatism (which allows for a priori knowledge, but
does not go beyond the pure analysis of concepts, as is done in analytical propositions) and skep-
ticism (which allows for synthetic propositions, but denies that they are knowable a priori and
holds that they are purely empirical).
It is not the task of metaphysics itself to show its possibility, but of a science that precedes
metaphysics. Kant calls it “transcendental philosophy” (§ 5, IV:279). Kant answers the question of
the possibility of metaphysics in four steps:
1. How is pure mathematics possible? (IV:280–294).
2. How is pure natural science possible? (IV:294–326).
3. How is metaphysics in general possible? (IV:327–350).
4. How is metaphysics as a science possible? (IV:365–371).