/lit/ - Literature

Critique of pure reason.
Wasn't born with one!

Now that the dust has settled, are a priori synthetic judgements possible?

Kemp Smith, Muller, or Meiklejohn?

Kant reasonably claims that intuition and understanding, which together form the totality of our faculties for knowledge, can only grant us knowledge of and about appearances, not things-in-themselves. Since things-in-themselves by definition do not appear to us, this makes sense; otherwise I'd have the ability to cognize an object that has never actually appeared to me.
However, Kant himself ignores this boundary multiple times, such as when he claims that space and time definitely do not exist as things-in-themselves by debunking -- through logic that is only applicable to appearances -- the Newtonian and Leibnizian views of it.
This becomes especially problematic when one realizes that Kant used this very logic to claim that things-in-themselves must surely exist, because there must be a something that causes an appearance.
So do we actually have reasonable ground to believe there is anything except appearances?

what do I need to prior to A Critique of Pure Logic to be able to really understand and appreciate Kant?

RIP Democritus, Heraclitus, Anaximander, Plato, Lucretius, Parmenides, Aquinas, Scotus, Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche, Leibniz, Wolff, Locke, Berkeley, etc etc

Does he have the highest body count in philosophy?

i shudder to think that there are people out there who call themselves well read and they have never even glanced at the transcendental aesthetic

Kant is complete shit.

**Analytic a priori judgments** are definitional. For example: A = A. The subject is contained in the predicate. It is both necessary and universal. Regardless of of time and space, A will always be equal to A. There is nothing 'interesting' about this statement.

**Synthetic a posteriori (empirical) judgments** are not definitional. For example: A = B. The subject is not contained in the predicate. B amplifies and tell us something new about the subject. Such a statement must be empirical, meaning learned through the senses, and it is neither necessary nor universal.

Kant thought that mathematics was analytic a priori. For example: 7 + 5 = 12. The predicate 12 is contained in the subject, 7 + 5. Such a statement is necessary and universal.

He also thought, however, that geometry, the mathematical study of space, was a *synthetic a priori judgment*.

The statement "A triangle is a three-sided object enclosed on a plane" is undoubtedly analytic a priori.

On the other hand, he thought the statement "A triangle is an object whose interior angles add up to be 180 degrees" was synthetic a prior, because seemingly the the predicate is not obviously contained in the subject -- that experience must play its hand in informing us of this additional, amplifying information. Nevertheless, the predicate is universal and necessary.

According to Kant, this arguments is valid, because our intuition of space imposes itself upon our representation of things in the world. Things in the world, though, aren't spatial -- they are noumenal, and thus cannot be experience as things-in-themselves, independent of the mind.

Thus, the synthetic a priori judgment is a valid category of judgment. This seems like fucking shit, though. How aren't things in the world spatial? If they weren't extended into space, how would we feel them as solids, for instance? This is shit. How could the whole of Western philosophy after Kant rely on this ridiculous idea?

i have become deeply cynical, disturbed and jaded. everything nice seems naive, irrational or deluded.

im not claiming to be the ultimate rational thinker, but within my thoughts i cannot find where i am wrong. but the thought of going to a state of knowingly-irrational complacency is even more depressing than my current state. at least being sad identifies that things are bad.

"a critique of pure reason" has an attractive title to me for this reason but i am no philosopher and havent ever read philosophy

is this the wrong book to read for insight on this

is this worth reading or should i just stop being a colossal faggot

I am looking for recommendations of beginner/intermediate german language books
>inb4 Kritik der reinen Vernunft
i've been learning german for five years in school
>is kafka a good place to start?