1790

                           THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT

                                by Immanuel Kant

                       translated by James Creed Meredith
PREFACE

            PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 1790.

  The faculty of knowledge from a priori principles may be called pure
reason, and the general investigation into its possibility and
bounds the Critique of Pure Reason. This is permissible although "pure
reason," as was the case with the same use of terms in our first work,
is only intended to denote reason in its theoretical employment, and
although there is no desire to bring under review its faculty as
practical reason and its special principles as such. That Critique is,
then, an investigation addressed simply to our faculty of knowing
things a priori. Hence it makes our cognitive faculties its sole
concern, to the exclusion of the feeling of pleasure or displeasure
and the faculty of desire; and among the cognitive faculties it
confines its attention to understanding and its a priori principles,
to the exclusion of judgement and reason, (faculties that also
belong to theoretical cognition,) because it turns out in the sequel
that there is no cognitive faculty other than understanding capable of
affording constitutive a priori principles of knowledge. Accordingly
the critique which sifts these faculties one and all, so as to try the
possible claims of each of the other faculties to a share in the clear
possession of knowledge from roots of its own, retains nothing but
what understanding prescribes a priori as a law for nature as the
complex of phenomena-the form of these being similarly furnished a
priori. All other pure concepts it relegates to the rank of ideas,*
which for our faculty of theoretical cognition are transcendent;
though they are not without their use nor redundant, but discharge
certain functions as regulative principles.** For these concepts serve
partly to restrain the officious pretentions of understanding,
which, presuming on its ability to supply a priori the conditions of
the possibility of all things which it is capable of knowing,
behaves as if it had thus determined these bounds as those of the
possibility of all things generally, and partly also to lead
understanding, in its study of nature, according to a principle of
completeness, unattainable as this remains for it, and so to promote
the ultimate aim of all knowledge.

  *[The word is defined in SS 17 & SS 57 Remark I. See Critique of
Pure Reason, "Of the Conceptions of Pure Reason" - Section 1 & 2:
"I understand by idea a necessary conception of reason, to which no
corresponding object can be discovered in the world of sense."
(Ibid., Section 2.) "They contain a certain perfection, attainable
by no possible empirical cognition; and they give to reason a
systematic unity, to which the unity of experience attempts to
approximate, but can never completely attain." (Ibid., "Ideal of
Pure Reason").

  **[Cf. Critique of Pure Reason, Appendix.]

  Properly, therefore, it was understanding which, so far as it
contains constitutive a priori cognitive principles, has its special
realm, and one, moreover, in our faculty of knowledge that the
Critique, called in a general way that of pure reason was intended
to establish in secure but particular possession against all other
competitors. In the same way reason, which contains constitutive a
priori principles solely in respect of the faculty of desire, gets its
holding assigned to it by The Critique of Practical Reason.

  But now comes judgement, which in the order of our cognitive
faculties forms a middle term between understanding and reason. Has it
also got independent a priori principles? If so, are they
constitutive, or are they merely regulative, thus indicating no
special realm? And do they give a rule a priori to the feeling of
pleasure and displeasure, as the middle term between the faculties
of cognition and desire, just as understanding prescribes laws a
priori for the former and reason for the latter? This is the topic
to which the present Critique is devoted.

  A critique of pure reason, i.e., of our faculty of judging on a
priori principles, would be incomplete if the critical examination
of judgement, which is a faculty of knowledge, and as such lays
claim to independent principles, were not dealt with separately.
Still, however, its principles cannot, in a system of pure philosophy,
form a separate constituent part intermediate between the
theoretical and practical divisions, but may when needful be annexed
to one or other as occasion requires. For if such a system is some day
worked out under the general name of metaphysic-and its full and
complete execution is both possible and of the utmost importance for
the employment of reason in all departments of its activity-the
critical examination of the ground for this edifice must have been
previously carried down to the very depths of the foundations of the
faculty of principles independent of experience, lest in some
quarter it might give way, and sinking, inevitably bring with it the
ruin of all.

  We may readily gather, however, from the nature of the faculty of
judgement (whose correct employment is so necessary and universally
requisite that it is just this faculty that is intended when we
speak of sound understanding) that the discovery of a peculiar
principle belonging to it-and some such it must contain in itself a
priori, for otherwise it would not be a cognitive faculty the
distinctive character of which is obvious to the most commonplace