Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason Author:Immanuel Kant Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INTKODUCTION, ' The history of philosophy has ceased,' says Las- salle1, 'to count as a mere collection of curiosities, an assemblage of arbitrary or accident... more »al opinions. Thought too is seen to be an historical product; and the history of philosophy a representation of the course of its self-development in necessary continuity. And if the history of philosophy, like all other historical development, is governed by inner necessary laws, then surely, here if anywhere, in this history of knowledge, the law of the development of knowledge must coincide with the law of knowledge itself.' I have taken these words as the motto of the following historical introduction, although they are not free from the obscurity and confusion of thought which flourished under the rule of Hegelianism. For the 'History of Philosophy' and the 'History of Knowledge' are very far from being identical. If our conception of philosophy includes all those reflections which the human mind has at different times indulged in respecting its own nature, then the history of philosophy will be a history of these reflections. and will form only a portion, though an important one, of the ' History of Knowledge,' and this only so far as it satisfies the true test of value by exercisinga lasting influence upon the processes of human thought. It is however possible to regard the history of knowledge as the chief or sole object of philosophical research, and if such a view has not yet received the adherence of the majority, it has at least been formulated by one authority of weight, in these terms: 'All future philosophy must be a philosophy of language.' 1 Die Philosophic Herakleitos des Dunkeln, i. p. xii. VOL. I. B Notwithstanding this obvious confusion of terms, I have chosen the above words of Lassalle as a ...« less