순수 이성 비판 / The Critique of Pure Reason (영문판)

임마누엘 칸트 지음

아이보리잉크 2025년 09월 24일 출간

작품소개

책소개

* 이 도서는 영어만으로 구성되어 있습니다.
'순수 이성 비판(The Critique of Pure Reason)'은 독일 철학자 임마누엘 칸트(Immanuel Kant)의 대표적인 저서로, 인간 인식의 한계와 가능성을 탐구한 철학적 고전입니다. 이 책에서 칸트는 인간 이성이 세계를 어떻게 이해하고 구성하는지, 경험과 선험적 개념이 어떻게 작용하는지 논의합니다. 학문, 철학, 인식론 분야에서 깊은 영향을 준 이 작품을 영문판으로 읽는 것은 원어로 표현된 칸트의 사유와 용어를 직접 접함으로써 원전에 더욱 가까이 다가갈 수 있는 기회를 제공합니다. 영문판으로 읽을 때 칸트의 논리적 전개와 본연의 어휘를 이해하는 데 도움이 되며, 영어권 철학 담론과의 연결도 강화할 수 있습니다.

목차

표지
목차
본문
copyrights
(참고) 분량: 약 120 만자

책 속으로

That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt. For how is it possible that the faculty of cognition should be awakened into exercise otherwise than by means of objects which affect our senses, and partly of themselves produce representations, partly rouse our powers of understanding into activity, to compare to connect, or to separate these, and so to convert the raw material of our sensuous impressions into a knowledge of objects, which is called experience? In respect of time, therefore, no knowledge of ours is antecedent to experience, but begins with it.
But, though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience. For, on the contrary, it is quite possible that our empirical knowledge is a compound of that which we receive through impressions, and that which the faculty of cognition supplies from itself (sensuous impressions giving merely the occasion), an addition which we cannot distinguish from the original element given by sense, till long practice has made us attentive to, and skilful in separating it. It is, therefore, a question which requires close investigation, and not to be answered at first sight, whether there exists a knowledge altogether independent of experience, and even of all sensuous impressions? Knowledge of this kind is called à priori, in contradistinction to empirical knowledge, which has its sources à posteriori, that is, in experience.
But the expression, "à priori," is not as yet definite enough adequately to indicate the whole meaning of the question above started. For, in speaking of knowledge which has its sources in experience, we are wont to say, that this or that may be known à priori, because we do not derive this knowledge immediately from experience, but from a general rule, which, however, we have itself borrowed from experience. Thus, if a man undermined his house, we say, "he might know à priori that it would have fallen;" that is, he needed not to have waited for the experience that it did actually fall. But still, à priori, he could not know even this much. For, that bodies are heavy, and, consequently, that they fall when their supports are taken away, must have been known to him previously, by means of experience.
By the term "knowledge à priori," therefore, we shall in the sequel understand, not such as is independent of this or that kind of experience, but such as is absolutely so of all experience. Opposed to this is empirical knowledge, or that which is possible only à posteriori, that is, through experience. Knowledge à priori is either pure or impure. Pure knowledge à priori is that with which no empirical element is mixed up. For example, the proposition, "Every change has a cause," is a proposition à priori, but impure, because change is a conception which can only be derived from experience.
***
The question now is as to a criterion, by which we may securely distinguish a pure from an empirical cognition. Experience no doubt teaches us that this or that object is constituted in such and such a manner, but not that it could not possibly exist otherwise. Now, in the first place, if we have a proposition which contains the idea of necessity in its very conception, it is priori. If, moreover, it is not derived from any other proposition, unless from one equally involving the idea of necessity, it is absolutely priori. Secondly, an empirical judgement never exhibits strict and absolute, but only assumed and comparative universality (by induction); therefore, the most we can say is—so far as we have hitherto observed, there is no exception to this or that rule. If, on the other hand, a judgement carries with it strict and absolute universality, that is, admits of no possible exception, it is not derived from experience, but is valid absolutely à priori.
Empirical universality is, therefore, only an arbitrary extension of validity, from that which may be predicated of a proposition valid in most cases, to that which is asserted of a proposition which holds good in all; as, for example, in the affirmation, "All bodies are heavy." When, on the contrary, strict universality characterizes a judgement, it necessarily indicates another peculiar source of knowledge, namely, a faculty of cognition à priori. Necessity and strict universality, therefore, are infallible tests for distinguishing pure from empirical knowledge, and are inseparably connected with each other. But as in the use of these criteria the empirical limitation is sometimes more easily detected than the contingency of the judgement, or the unlimited universality which we attach to a judgement is often a more convincing proof than its necessity, it may be advisable to use the criteria separately, each being by itself infallible.
Now, that in the sphere of human cognition we have judgements which are necessary, and in the strictest sense universal, consequently pure à priori, it will be an easy matter to show. If we desire an example from the sciences, we need only take any proposition in mathematics. If we cast our eyes upon the commonest operations of the understanding, the proposition, "Every change must have a cause," will amply serve our purpose. In the latter case, indeed, the conception of a cause so plainly involves the conception of a necessity of connection with an effect, and of a strict universality of the law, that the very notion of a cause would entirely disappear, were we to derive it, like Hume, from a frequent association of what happens with that which precedes; and the habit thence originating of connecting representations—the necessity inherent in the judgement being therefore merely subjective. Besides, without seeking for such examples of principles existing à priori in cognition, we might easily show that such principles are the indispensable basis of the possibility of experience itself, and consequently prove their existence à priori. For whence could our experience itself acquire certainty, if all the rules on which it depends were themselves empirical, and consequently fortuitous? No one, therefore, can admit the validity of the use of such rules as first principles. But, for the present, we may content ourselves with having established the fact, that we do possess and exercise a faculty of pure à priori cognition; and, secondly, with having pointed out the proper tests of such cognition, namely, universality and necessity.
Not only in judgements, however, but even in conceptions, is an à priori origin manifest. For example, if we take away by degrees from our conceptions of a body all that can be referred to mere sensuous experience—colour, hardness or softness, weight, even impenetrability—the body will then vanish; but the space which it occupied still remains, and this it is utterly impossible to annihilate in thought. Again, if we take away, in like manner, from our empirical conception of any object, corporeal or incorporeal, all properties which mere experience has taught us to connect with it, still we cannot think away those through which we cogitate it as substance, or adhering to substance, although our conception of substance is more determined than that of an object. Compelled, therefore, by that necessity with which the conception of substance forces itself upon us, we must confess that it has its seat in our faculty of cognition à priori.

인물정보

저자(글) 임마누엘 칸트

임마누엘 칸트(Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804)는 독일의 대표적 철학자로, 현대 철학의 기초를 확립한 인물입니다. 그는 인식론, 윤리학, 형이상학 영역에서 혁신적인 이론을 제시했으며, 그의 철학은 '코페르니쿠스적 전환'으로 불릴 만큼 인식의 의미를 근본적으로 바꾸었습니다. 칸트는 '순수 이성 비판' 외에도 '실천 이성 비판', '판단력 비판' 등 3대 비판서를 통해 인간 이성의 역할과 도덕법칙, 미학적 판단에 대한 심도 깊은 논의를 전개하였습니다.