PHILOSOPHY 350. Kant:
Critique of Pure Reason
Reading Questions
Prefaces to first and second editions, pp. 5-
40.
1. What is Kant's
“revolutionary” idea?
2. What is Kant's definition
of metaphysics?
3. What do “a priori” and “a
posteriori” mean?
4. What does “intuition”
mean?
5. What does
“thing-in-itself” mean?
6. What is the purpose of a
critique of pure reason?
7. What is the positive and
the negative value of critique?
8. Why will a critique of
reason decide the question of the possibility of metaphysics?
9. What are speculative
reason and practical reason? How do they differ?
10. What is the difference
between dogmatism and critique?
Introduction, pp. 43-68.
1. What are the criteria for
a judgment to be a priori?
2. What is the difference
between pure and empirical cognitions?
3. What does Kant mean by the
term “cognition”?
4. What are the “unavoidable
problems” of reason?
5. What is the distinction
between analytic and synthetic judgments?
6. How is the
analytic-synthetic distinction related to the a priori- a posteriori
distinction?
7. What are synthetic a
priori judgments and how are they possible?
(This is a fairly broad
question that requires a general understanding of the CPR, therefore you should
confine your answer to what Kant says in the Introduction keeping in mind that
this question will be answered in various degrees of depth later in the text)
8. Why
does Kant argue that mathematical propositions are synthetic? Show how
arithmetic propositions (such
as “7+5=12") are synthetic.
9. What is the general
problem of pure reason?
10. What is transcendental
philosophy?
Transcendental Aesthetic,
pp. 71-84.
1. What does Kant mean by the
term “aesthetic”?
2. What is a
transcendental aesthetic?
3. What is intuition?
4. What does “sensibility”
mean?
5. What is the distinction
between sensation and intuition?
6. What is the distinction
between the matter and form of sensation?
7. What is the distinction
between pure and empirical intuitions?
8. What is the distinction
between intuitions and concepts?
9. Why is space a priori?
10. Why is space an intuition
rather than a concept?
11. What does it mean that
space is empirically real and transcendentally ideal?
Transcendental Aesthetic,
pp. 85-104.
1. How does Kant argue that
time is not a concept?
2. How does Kant argue that
time is a priori?
3. What are the parallels and differences between space and time?
4. How does Kant argue that space and time do not belong to
things-in-themselves?
5.Why is the unknowability of
things-in-themselves necessary for the possibility of synthetic a priori
propositions?
6. What is an intellectual
intuition? Is human intuition
intellectual or sensible?
7. What is the general
purpose of the transcendental aesthetic?
Transcendental Logic, pp.
105-150.
1. What are the two sources
of our cognition?
2. What is the difference
between pure and empirical logic?
3. What is the difference
between pure and transcendental logic?
4. What is the difference
between applied and transcendental logic?
5. What is the distinction between pure and empirical concepts?
6. What is the distinction between analytic and dialectical logic?
7. What does transcendental
analytic consist of?
8. Why is understanding
discursive? What does this mean?
9. What is the relationship
between judgments and understanding?
10. Why are concepts predicates?
11. What is the table of
judgments? Why is it complete?
12. What is synthesis?
13. What is the relationship
between the table of judgments and the table of categories?
14.
What are categories?
15. What is the distinction
between dynamical and mathematical categories?
16. What is a deduction in
general, according to Kant?
17.What is a transcendental
deduction? What is its task?
18. Why do we need a
transcendental deduction for pure concepts but not for pure intutions?
19. What does Kant mean when
he writes that “the presentation alone makes the object possible”?
20. What is the concept of an
object?
Transcendental Deduction,
pp. 150-203.
A-deduction (150-174)
Transcendental Deduction [First Edition]
1. What is the synthesis of
apprehension? What is the synthesis of reproduction? What is the synthesis of
recognition? How do these three syntheses relate to each other?
2. What is Kant’s argument
(A102) concerning the necessity of reproduction in imagination?
3. How is Kant’s definition
of understanding and concepts in this section that is different from his
previous definitions?
4. What is an object of
presentations?
5. What role does the
transcendental unity of apperception play in the A-deduction?
6. How is the unity of the
object possible for Kant?
7. What is the role of
imagination in the A-deduction?
8. How does Kant define
nature? How is understanding
legislative for nature?
B-deduction (175-203)
Transcendental Deduction [Second Edition]
9. What is the fundamental
aim of the transcendental deduction?
10. What is transcendental
apperception? How does it differ from empirical apperception?
11. What is the synthetic
unity of apperception? What function does it have in the transcendental deduction?
12. What is the role of
imagination in the B-deduction?
13. Why can we not think an
object without categories?
14. Why is the unity of
consciousness necessary to justify the application of the categories to the
objects of experience?
15. What is the main
difference between the A-deduction and the B-deduction?
Reading Questions:
Schematism, Axioms, and Anticipations, pp. 204-247.
1. What is schematism?
2. What is a schema?
3. Why is a schema needed?
4. What is the relationship
between the schema and time?
5. What is the relationship
between schemata and categories?
6. How are schemata different
than images?
7. What is the difference
between concepts and principles?
8. How is the principle of
contradiction (a rule of general logic) applicable to the transcendental logic?
9. What is the supreme
principle of all synthetic judgments?
10. What are axioms of
intuitons?
11. What are anticipations of
perception?
12. What are extensive and
intensive magnitudes? How do they differ?
Reading Questions: Analogies,
Postulates, Refutation of Idealism, pp. 247-302.
1. What are the analogies,
and how are they different from axioms and anticipations?
2. How does Kant define
substance?
3. How does Kant define
causality?
4. Why can’t we order
experience temporally in different ways?
5. Why are the analogies
regulative?
6. What are the postulates of
empirical thought?
7. Why does outer experience
provide the basis of inner experience?
8. Why does the consciousness
of my existence prove the existence of objects outside me?
9. What is the kind of
idealism Kant refutes?
10. How does Kant’s
refutation of idealism relate to the distinction between appearance and
thing-in-itself?