(1) Introduction "Critique of pure reason" as Philosophical Methodology The critique is not a system, but a methodology. It is the propaedeutic to the transcendental philosophy as a system. The transcendental philosophy is the essential core of metaphysics as a science. Kant Wishes to establish metaphysics as a science ultimately. Thus the critique means the. methodology of metaphysics as a science ultimately and that of the transcendental philosophy directly. Namely it is the philosophical methodology, and not the scientific one. The philosophical methodology consists of three parts-the fundamental method, the method of recognizing objects and the method of forming a system. (2) The critical method as the fundamental method The fundamental method is the one upon which we must ultimately demand in order to construct philosophy. According to Kant, in philosophy we must first ask about the possibility of cognition, before we try to recognize any object. That means the critique of the faculty of cognition, self-critique, or reason. Namely self-cognizance or reflexion of reason means "Critique of pure reason" itself. Thus the attitude of critique as self-cognizange is the most fundamental method. (3) Reduction as the procedure of the critical method Critique means self-cognizance, As selves go diverse, there arise different standpoints. Therefore critique first means ultimately to deepen the self-range. And then it must look into the self froth the standpoint of the self that it talkes for the most fundamental one. But these two apparently different procedures really mean only the two faces of one proceeding-self-cognizanece. Thus I think the ultimate deepening of self-range as self-cognizing in this meaning is to be called. "Reduction." The critical method can be first realized by means of the procedure of reduction. (4) The transcendental method as the method of reogariizing objects -the critical method and the transcendental method Critique is the self-cognizance of reason. In other -words it is the critique of cognizance-faculty apriori in general. At the same, time it means the critique of the conceptions apriori which the cognizance-faculty possesses. Those conceptions are those of object-in-general, in other words the conditions of the possibility of recognizing objects. The cognition of those conditions means the transcendental cognition; the conceptions as the conditions mean the transcendental conceptions. These transcendental conceptions are the objects of the transcendental philosophy. So the transcendental method by which we recognize the objects js the Method of recognizing objects in philosophy. We must remark (1) the transcendental conceptions e.g. categories mean. the methodological ones in scientific methodology, but. the object-conceptions in the philosophieal methodology; (2) the critical method is to be distiliguished from the transcendental method as based upon the former. (5) The analytical and synthetical method as the procedure of the transcendental method the experimental method The procedure of transcendental method means the one by which we recognize the transcendental-faculty and conception. It is named the analytical method in Prolegomena, and the synthetical method in critique. But they are originally correlative. Strictly speaking or microscopically, the two methods are used in both Prolegomena and Critique. Only microscopically it seems that the one of the two methods, is used separately. The experimental method is, as a rule, the name given to the synthetical method, but it is originally complex, containing both methods (or procedures). The transcendental method must use the complex experimental method as its procedure.
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