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Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics By Immanul Kant

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In The Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, Immanuel Kant endeavors to refute Hume’s claim that all ideas have their origins in experience through his own transcendental idealism (Prolegomena, introduction, CoP pg. 819) . To do this, Kant progresses the view that it is possible to have a priori truths. To support this refutation, Kant develops a conceptual scheme that works to explain how a priori truths are synthesized in the mind, and gives an account of Kant’s “two-world view”. This view explores the relation and existence of the phenomenal world and the world of things-in-themselves. For the purpose of this paper I will explain this conceptual scheme in order to understand how it is that Kant reaches the conclusion that things-in-themselves are unknowable. From this I will offer a critique of Kant’s account of things-in-themselves and suggest that they are unknowable because the idea of such things is unintelligible.
In order to understand Kant’s claiming of things-in-themselves being unknowable can …show more content…

It is important here to understand Kant’s notion of space and time. This is because to Kant, space and time do not come from experience, but are the form of our apprehension of the world. He believes that space and time are both basic and necessary to form experiences. Our experiences take the form of space and time, but are not the content of our experiences. Everything that appears to us must have spatial properties. It is this idea of space and time that helps develop the conceptual scheme. Within the conceptual scheme, Kant claims that there are twelve universal categories that process any possible object of experience, and as such are necessary to experience the world. They are (I) Unity, Plurality, Totality; (II) Reality, Negation, Limitation; (III) Substance, Cause, Community; (IV) Possibility, Existence, Necessity (Prolegomena, sec. 21, CoP pg.

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