Introduction

After the Critique of Pure Reason appeared, readers widely complained of its obscurity, and some mistook it for idealism of Berkeley's kind. Two years later Kant wrote this short book, using what he called the 'analytic method', which starts from knowledge already established and works back to the conditions of its possibility, in order to make the main points of the first Critique clearer. He confesses that it was Hume's doubt that 'interrupted my dogmatic slumber'. The whole book turns on one question: how are synthetic judgements a priori possible? He asks in turn how pure mathematics, pure natural science and metaphysics are possible, and concludes that we can know only appearances, not things in themselves. For readers who want to enter Kant's philosophy, it is the best introduction.