Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Present Itself as a Science is a book by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, published in 1783, two years after the first edition of his
Critique of Pure Reason. One of Kant's shorter works, it contains a summary of the
Critique‘s main conclusions, sometimes by arguments Kant had not used in the
Critique. Kant characterizes his more accessible approach here as an "analytic" one, as opposed to the
Critique‘s "synthetic" examination of successive faculties of the mind and their principles. The book is also intended as a polemic. Kant was disappointed by the poor reception of the
Critique of Pure Reason, and here he repeatedly emphasizes the importance of its critical project for the very existence of metaphysics as a science. The final appendix contains a detailed rebuttal to an unfavorable review of the
Critique. In the standard
Akademie edition of Kant's works, the
Prolegomena takes up part of Volume V.