| This dissertation explores Immanuel Kant's reasons for calling the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787) a "critique." While many readers assume that Kant intended his "critique" to establish the "limits" of reason, this work shows that Kant intended to determine the "sources" of metaphysics, through a "critique" of the "the faculty of reason itself.";By surveying other eighteenth century conceptions of "critique," this dissertation shows that "critique" was not associated with the "analysis of and reflection upon limits" during the enlightenment, as many contemporary scholars assume. Philologists, literary critics, aestheticians, and logicians all used "critique" in a primarily "positive" sense that was only derivatively and secondarily concerned with the "negativity" of setting limits and determining bounds during the eighteenth century.;After establishing historical context in which Kant's references to a "critique" of pure reason are to be situated, this dissertation traces the course of Kant's "pre-critical" philosophy from his earliest attempts to present a systematic treatise on metaphysics to the correspondence in which Kant first announces his "critique" of pure reason. This study demonstrates that Kant's "critical" philosophy is consistent with his "pre-critical" attempts to determine the "proper method" of metaphysics. While there are many differences between Kant's "pre-critical" works and his "critical" philosophy, they share a similar goal: The determination of the "proper method" of metaphysics.;This dissertation argues that what is novel about the Critique of Pure Reason is not Kant's attempt to "transform the accepted procedure" of metaphysics, but his attempt to do so through a "critique" of pure reason. By studying the possible sources of Kant's use of the term, the different senses in which he employed it at different times, and the definitions of a "critique" of pure reason that Kant offers in his notes, lectures, correspondence, and in the Critique of Pure Reason itself, this dissertation reconstructs the manner in which Kant thought a "critique" of pure reason would decide the possibility of metaphysics in general, as well as the possibility of metaphysics as a science. |
