COMMENTARIES ON KANT: THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON (1/n)

 INTRODUCTION

1. OF THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PURE AND EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE

            In our attempt to understand Kant's works, or for that matter, any Philosopher's work, it is Step one to get into our head, what does he stand for? Or what is that which he presumes as self-evidently true. For example, here, in the beginning, he writes, "That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt." This is his assumption. The second step to do philosophy is not to get convinced of the assumption that the thinker is making but to keep it in your head as just an assumption or a statement without judgement and keep reading and see what He does with that statement. 

Now, we see, Kant assumes that all our knowledge is Experiential. Here, the most important word where he wants to stress is not Knowledge or experience, but the word, "Our". 

Whatever we know derives from experience. It should not necessarily mean that All knowledge that can be possible in the world/universe is experiential only. This is a reasonable deduction from the assumption. But here is my question to that, "But Kant, to ask this question, should not we ask first, is there knowledge without the knower?". 

The Knower finds knowledge as knowledge. May be before that, He remains experienced. And then cognition processes work and he became a knower of some knowledge. I think it will be accurate to say that Knower and the Knowledge are born together post-experience only. 

But Kant here posits a question, "It is, therefore, a question which requires close investigation, and not to be answered at first sight, whether there exists a knowledge altogether independent of experience, and even of all sensuous impressions?"

He is right. This needs investigation. But, again, if all we can do is experience and if there is some knowledge which is independent of experience, will not its detection by the knower automatically make it an empirical knowledge (or experienced knowledge). 

Currently, Kant is building up his premise. Where he is concerned with some Knowledge (which he calls "Pure a priori Knowledge", which he asks, can it exist? He distinguishes it from the Posteriori knowledge (which is empirical one) and Impure A priori knowledge (which is sort of a knowledge which is a generalized wisdom derived from some remote experience, for example: Fire will burn this chair, this might not need for me to actually burn it, I might know it beforehand but that is exactly because I have burnt wood in some form or have seen it burning, so it is experience based but on  a remote experience). 

Finally, I liked this statement here, "By the term “knowledge à priori,” therefore, we shall in the sequel understand, not such as is independent of this or that kind of experience, but such as is absolutely so of all experience." This is in fact, the crux of his assertion here. 

To search for Knowledge a priori, is to search of some knowledge which is independent of all possible forms of experience. This concludes the first part of introduction, "Of the difference between Pure and Empirical Knowledge.