A Commentary to Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason”

Abstract

THE term critique or criticism, as employed by Kant, is of English origin. It appears in seventeenth and eighteenth century English, chiefty in adjectival form, as a literary and artistic term—for instance, in the works of Pope, who was Kant’s favourite English poet. Kant was the first to employ it in German, extending it from the field of aesthetics to that of general philosophy. A referente in Kant’s Logic¹ to Home’s Elements of Criticism² would seem to indicate that it was Home’s use of the term which suggested to him its wider employment. “Critique of pure reason,” in its primary meaning, signifies the passing of criticai judgments upon pure reason. In this sense Kant speaks of his time as “the age of criticism (Zeitalter der Kritik).” Frequently, however, he takes the term more specifically as meaning a criticai investigation leading to positive as well as to negative results, Occasionally, especially in the Dialectic, it also signifies a discipline applied to pure reason, limiting it within due bounds, The first appearance of the word in Kant’s writings is in 1765 in the Nachricht³ of his lectures for the winter term 1765–1766.