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Critique of Pure Reason

The Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft), published by Immanuel Kant in 1781, is the seminal work that initiates his "Copernican Revolution" in philosophy, aiming to determine the limits and validity of metaphysical knowledge (knowledge claimed to be a priori, meaning independent of experience). Kant sets out to answer the fundamental question: "How are synthetic a priori judgments possible?" A synthetic judgment is one that adds new information to the subject (is not tautological), and an a priori judgment is universal and necessary (does not depend on experience). Kant argues that metaphysics had failed until then because it did not recognize that objects must conform to our knowledge, rather than the reverse.

The work is divided into three main sections, which analyze the faculties of knowledge:

1. Transcendental Aesthetic (Sensibility) 

Kant begins by analyzing Sensibility (the faculty of receiving impressions). He argues that all experiential knowledge starts with intuitions that are ordered by the a priori forms of Sensibility: Space and Time. Space and Time are not properties of objects in themselves (things-in-themselves), but are the innate structures of our mind that make experience possible. This is why mathematical judgments (Geometry in Space, Arithmetic in Time) are synthetic and a priori—they are universal and necessary because they are based on the structures our own minds impose on experience.

2. Transcendental Analytic (Understanding)

The second part focuses on the Understanding (the faculty of thinking or judging). The Understanding takes sensible intuitions and unifies them into concepts using the Categories of the Understanding, also called Pure Concepts. These categories (such as Substance, Causality, Unity, Plurality, etc.) are 12 a priori forms that organize and give meaning to the chaotic data provided by Sensibility. Causality, for instance, is not something we find in experience, but a rule that the mind imposes on experience so we can conceive of connected events. Scientific knowledge (physics) is possible because the categories are validly applied to the world of experience (the phenomenon).

3. Transcendental Dialectic (Reason)

The final part examines Reason (the faculty that seeks the unconditioned and the absolute). Reason forms Transcendental Ideas (Soul (Self), World (Cosmos), and God), which are concepts that cannot be directly filled by sensible experience. The Dialectic demonstrates that by applying the categories of the Understanding beyond the limits of possible experience (attempting to know the things-in-themselves or the noumenon), Reason falls into unavoidable errors, such as the Paralogisms (about the Soul), the Antinomies (about the World), and the Ideal of Pure Reason (about God). The purpose of these Ideas, however, is not to provide objective knowledge, but to act as regulative principles that guide the Understanding to seek ever-greater unity and completeness in knowledge. The central conclusion is that human knowledge is limited to the world of phenomena (that which appears to us), while the noumenon (the underlying reality) remains unknowable to pure reason.