Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics

Immanuel Kant begins by asking whether metaphysics can become a science with firm standards of knowledge. His discussion takes up David Hume's challenge to cause and effect, then considers what reason can establish and how its claims relate to experience. The book proceeds through inquiries into pure mathematics, the science of nature and metaphysics itself, organizing its argument around the possibility and grounds of scientific knowledge.

The discussion of categories examines the concepts through which the understanding makes judgments of experience possible. Kant argues for an ordered system that assigns concepts their proper places and clarifies their use. Edited in English by Paul Carus, this volume also includes a publishers' preface that presents the work as an introduction to Kant's philosophy. Readers interested in the foundations of knowledge can follow an argument concerned with the reach of reason and the conditions under which its claims can hold.