The Critique of Pure Reason: Limits of Empiricism and the Copernican Revolution

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[...] The work Critique of Pure Reason aims to answer the question 'What can we know?' This is a classic question of the theory of knowledge examined in particular by Descartes, Locke and Hume. It is indeed to the latter and empiricism in particular that Kant opposes. Summary: The Critique of Pure Reason a has the objective of proceed to the separation of two types of elements: those that are accessible to knowledge and those that, due to the rational limitations imposed by our own nature, cannot be accessible to knowledge. [...]

[...] This is the origin of the project of the work: 'this Tribunal is none other than the Critique of Pure Reason'." The Copernican Revolution Thus, Kant seeks to highlight all knowledge accessible to man independently of any experience. It is then that the 'Copernican Revolution' takes place: knowledge no longer limits itself, nor even defines itself, by the knowledge of God, but by the knowledge of man. Human reason becomes, in this new configuration, the epicenter of knowledge in the sense that it is necessary and sufficient for what man can know. [...]

[...] However, there are elements that cannot be derived from experience and therefore cannot be said to be 'knowledge': these are the subjects offered by metaphysics such as 'God, the soul and the world'. Limits of empiricism to knowledge It therefore appears essential to clarify precisely the limits of knowledge: 'What can we really know?'. This approach requires the analysis of man's capacities. Contrary to what is implied by the philosophy of empiricism, Kant explains that 'knowledge' is not limited solely to the consequence of experience: 'knowledge' can be independent of all 'experience'. There are capacities in man that fill this lack of experience and offer man a kind of predisposition to 'knowledge'. [...]

[...] Moreover, 'the unconditioned' refers to what is neither 'given' by experience nor given by experience: it is the thing in itself as it appears to the mind without having previously enjoyed any experience of it. However, man is constantly trying to grasp what eludes him: it is this 'race from the given to the unconditioned' that human reason undertakes. The court It is because we are also rational beings that we question the existence of God, freedom and the immortality of the soul, and the origin of the world. [...]