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Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is considered one of the giants of philosophy, of his age or any other. It is largely this book that provides the foundation of this assessment. Whether one loves Kant or hates him (philosophically, that is), one cannot really ignore him; even when one isn't directly dealing with Kantian ideas, chances are great that Kant is made an impact. Kant was a professor of philosophy in the German city of Konigsberg, where he spent his entire life and career. Kant had a very organised and clockwork life - his habits were so regular that it was considered that the people of Konigsberg could set their clocks by his walks. The same regularity was part of his publication history, until 1770, when Kant had a ten-year hiatus in publishing. This was largely because he was working on this book, the 'Critique of Pure Reason'. Kant as a professor of philosophy was familiar with the Rationalists, such as Descartes, who founded the Enlightenment and in many ways started the phenomenon of modern philosophy. He was also familiar with the Empiricist school (John Locke and David Hume are perhaps the best known names in this), which challenged the rationalist framework. Between Leibniz' monads and Hume's development of Empiricism to its logical (and self-destructive) conclusion, coupled with the Romantic ideals typified by Rousseau, the philosophical edifice of the Enlightenment seemed about to topple. Kant rode to the rescue, so to speak. He developed an idea that was a synthesis of Empirical and Rationalist ideas. He developed the idea of a priori knowledge (that coming from pure reasoning) and a posterior knowledge (that coming from experience) and put them together into synthetic a priori statements as being possible. Knowledge, for Kant, comes from a synthesis of pure reason concepts and experience. Pure thought and sense experience were intertwined. However, there were definite limits to knowledge. Appearance/phenomenon was different from Reality/noumena - Kant held that the unknowable was the 'ding-an-sich', roughly translated as the 'thing-in-itself', for we can only know the appearance and categorial aspects of things. Kant was involved heavily in scientific method, including logic and mathematical methods, to try to describe the various aspects of his development. This is part of what makes Kant difficult reading for even the most dedicated of philosophy students and readers. He spends a lot of pages on logical reasoning, including what makes for fallacious and faulty reasoning. He also does a good deal of development on the ideas of God, the soul, and the universe as a whole as being essentially beyond the realm of this new science of metaphysics - these are not things that can be known in terms of the spatiotemporal realm, and thus proofs and constructs about them in reason are bound to fail. Kant does go on to attempt to prove the existence of God and the soul (and other things) from moral grounds, but that these cannot be proved in the scientific methodology of his metaphysics and logic. This book presents Kant's epistemology and a new concept of metaphysics that involves transcendental knowledge, a new category of concepts that aims to prove one proposition as the necessary presupposition of another. This becomes the difficulty for later philosophers, but it does become a matter that needs to be addressed by them. As Kant writes at the end of the text, 'The critical path alone is still open. If the reader has had the courtesy and patience to accompany me along this path, he may now judge for himself whether, if he cares to lend his aid in making this path into a high-road, it may not be possible to achieve before the end of the present century what many centuries have not been able to accomplish; namely, to secure for human reason complete satisfacton in regard to that with which it has all along so eagerly occupied itself, though hitherto in vain.' This is heavy reading, but worthwhile for those who will make the journey with Kant.

I had this book in my hands, Critique of Pure Reason. I tried reading it, but I didn't try very hard. One day I looked at the cover and noticed that my philosophy professor at Yale was one of the translators. I thought, damn, he didn't do too good (somehow it didn't occur to me that maybe Kant was the problem). Philosophy class, to me, had been a rather desperate situation - I didn't hope for excitement anymore; that was too much to ask. All I could ask for, hope for, was to understand.My professor (Allen Wood) is a brilliant, brilliant, kind man, funny sometimes, irreverent other times. Kantian? So I read a paragraph, again and again; I tried really really hard. Suddenly: Second Analogy of Experience? The Third Antinomy? Yes! Yes! It was not only clear but EXCITING stuff - I was so happy, so excited. I could understand Kant, and what's more, I liked it. When that happens, everything is suddenly so beautiful and good. I even wrote an A paper on Kant, in varying degrees of drunkenness. The Critique of Pure Reason is amazing. Of course I had help. Lectures, seminar, Allen Wood, who did his best and did it well. But I believe if you try hard enough, or if you're just brilliant by nature, CPR will delight you. When understanding descends, it's like a great, great gift. CPR is one of the reasons why I'm now able to admit that I rather LIKE philosophy.

Despite the earth-shaking importance of Kant for the world of thought, I am in complete disagreement with the idea that a style of writing is obscure because it deals with deep or complex subjects. Einstein once said that he could explain relativity to an uneducated barmaid-- and was famous for the clarity with which he educated nonscientists. One could cite many examples in the philosophical world as well (Camus, William James, etc.)...writing this bad isn't so for technical reasons, but for stylistic and egotistic ones. You're better off reading someone else's commentary on Kant.

It has been said that upon reading the first page of the Critique, that it could be likened to walking into a well lit room. Though the reading is rather laborious, it is well worth the time since there are few other in-depth accounts of the process of human reason which delve into the subject with such insight and contemplation.

I'd like to reiterate two famous quotations regarding Kant and this book. "God said that if Kant had not existed, someone would have had to invent him," and Critique of Pure Reason is considered to make Kant "the greatest of modern philosophers." This book is notorious for impenetrable obscurity. There are two reasons for a book to be obscure. One is the obscurity of expression and the other is the expression of obscurity. The latter is hardly to blame, and it's almost unavoidable, as is the case with this book. Unlike most philosophy books, the difficulty in reading this book actually underestimates the profundity of the content. One of the philosophy professors said it takes 5 years of strenuous reading for an average person to understand the whole content in his/her own way. So read this book only if you have lots of time and are not annoyed to read a passage over and over again.