Topics Philosophers

Question I started reading the first paragraph of Immanuel Kant's <i>Critique of Pure Reason</i>, and I fear I will die of mind strain pretty soon. But to my question. Why does he say in the first line that all knowledge come from experience, and just a little later say that a type of knowledge doesn't?

Accepted:
October 14, 2005

Comments

In the first line of the Introduction to the B (second) edition of the first Critique, Kant says that "there is no doubt whatsoever that all our cognition begins with experience, for how else should the cognitive faculty be awakened into exercise" (B1). So experience is necessary in order for human cognitive faculties to operate, and "no cognition in us precedes experience, and with experience, every cognition begins" (B1). Kant goes on to claim in the next paragraph that although knowledge (cognition) begins from experience, there may be some non-experiential component to knowledge provided by the cognitive faculty, "merely prompted by sensible impressions" (B1). He's not assuming that there is such a non-experiential component to knowledge, but simply asking whether there is any such non-experiential component to experience. This is, arguably, the guiding question of the first Critique.