84 – Interpretation: reading and taking notes
knowledge ‘arising out of’ it? All your note-taking should so far as
possible be guided by a question of your own, and this is ours. Below
are three quotations from commentaries on the Critique:
1. Kant here lays down his famous principle that all our knowledge
begins with experience but does not all arise out of experience, i.e.
there is no knowledge temporally before experience but it is not all
either causally due to or logically based on experience.
∗ ∗ Kant is here
using experience to mean sense-experience. Towards the end of the
second edition version of the section Kant distinguishes between
relatively a priori and absolutely a priori knowledge, the latter being
not merely ‘independent of this or that experience but absolutely
independent of all experience’.
∗ ‘Throughout the Introduction the term experience has (even at times in one
and the same sentence) two quite distinct meanings, (1) as product of sense
and understanding acting co-operatively, and (2) as the raw material (the
impressions) of sense’ (Kemp Smith, Commentary, p. 52).
(Ewing 1938: 16–17)
2. The argument of Kant’s Introduction . . . starts by defining the
problem of metaphysical knowledge a priori, and through it leads up
to the logical problem of the a priori synthetic judgement. In respect
of time all knowledge begins with experience. But it does not
therefore follow that it all arises from experience. Our experience may
be a compound of that which we receive through impressions, and of
that which pure reason supplies from itself.
†
† The question as to
whether or not any such a priori actually exists, is one that can be
answered only after further enquiry.
† This statement is first made in the Introduction to the second edition. It is
really out of keeping with the argument of the Introduction in either edition.
(Kemp Smith 1962: 27)
3. . . . Kant holds that while knowledge is occasioned by experience, it
does not arise out of experience. Knowledge, especially that with an a
priori character, is that which is before experience. In the case of
causality, this notion is not derived from the facticity of experience
through habitual association and inductive generalisation [as Hume
argued], but is an a priori concept of active consciousness which is
knowledge ‘arising out of’ it? All your note-taking should so far as
possible be guided by a question of your own, and this is ours. Below
are three quotations from commentaries on the Critique:
1. Kant here lays down his famous principle that all our knowledge
begins with experience but does not all arise out of experience, i.e.
there is no knowledge temporally before experience but it is not all
either causally due to or logically based on experience.
∗ ∗ Kant is here
using experience to mean sense-experience. Towards the end of the
second edition version of the section Kant distinguishes between
relatively a priori and absolutely a priori knowledge, the latter being
not merely ‘independent of this or that experience but absolutely
independent of all experience’.
∗ ‘Throughout the Introduction the term experience has (even at times in one
and the same sentence) two quite distinct meanings, (1) as product of sense
and understanding acting co-operatively, and (2) as the raw material (the
impressions) of sense’ (Kemp Smith, Commentary, p. 52).
(Ewing 1938: 16–17)
2. The argument of Kant’s Introduction . . . starts by defining the
problem of metaphysical knowledge a priori, and through it leads up
to the logical problem of the a priori synthetic judgement. In respect
of time all knowledge begins with experience. But it does not
therefore follow that it all arises from experience. Our experience may
be a compound of that which we receive through impressions, and of
that which pure reason supplies from itself.
†
† The question as to
whether or not any such a priori actually exists, is one that can be
answered only after further enquiry.
† This statement is first made in the Introduction to the second edition. It is
really out of keeping with the argument of the Introduction in either edition.
(Kemp Smith 1962: 27)
3. . . . Kant holds that while knowledge is occasioned by experience, it
does not arise out of experience. Knowledge, especially that with an a
priori character, is that which is before experience. In the case of
causality, this notion is not derived from the facticity of experience
through habitual association and inductive generalisation [as Hume
argued], but is an a priori concept of active consciousness which is