The Prolegomena to Kant’sLectures on Metaphysics

Abstract

The Prolegomena to Kant's Lectures on Metaphysics Karin de Boer Of the transcripts of Kant's lectures on metaphysics, stretching from 1762 to 1792, eight versions begin with an introductory account of the topic of the lecture series.These sections, often called "prolegomena," correspond to the extremely concise introductory section of Baumgarten's Metaphysics and, one way or another, address the question as to what metaphysics is.While the transcripts vary in length and content, all of them deal with this question by offering a definition of metaphysics, distinguishing metaphysics from other disciplines, and by singling out its various parts.In some cases, Kant also sketches the history of metaphysics until his time. 1 Moreover, transcripts from the 1770s and 1780s include reflections on the discipline that, prior to metaphysics proper, inquire into the nature of metaphysics and the limits within which it is possible, in other words, on the discipline that came to be known as transcendental philosophy and is only fully carried out in the Critique of Pure Reason.Since Kant's introductory remarks on the nature of metaphysics are developed in tandem with his published works, they allow us to trace the development of this propaedeutic discipline to his early dissatisfaction with the Wolffian conception of metaphysics as well as his successive efforts to improve both the common definition of metaphysics and the discipline itself.The topics covered in the introductory sections of the lectures are dealt with not only in a number of Kant's early writings, but also in the Prefaces, the two versions of the Introduction, and the Doctrine of Method of the Critique of Pure Reason.However, the lecture transcripts show perhaps more clearly than the published work how the idea of transcendental philosophy emerged from Kant's effort to determine what is worthwhile and worthless in Wolffian metaphysics and so to turn the metaphysics of his German predecessors into a science. 2 Seen from the perspective of the lectures, Kant was led to write the first Critique not because of a concern with the conditions and limits of human knowledge as such, but in order to identify the conditions and limits of the synthetic a priori cognition pursued in metaphysics.This chapter discusses the most important stages of Kant's introductions into the problem of metaphysics by focusing on his critical reception of Wolff and Baumgarten's metaphysics on the one hand and Crusius' on the other.After sketching, in the first section, the most relevant elements of their positions, the second section briefly looks at Kant's response to his predecessors in the Herder transcripts of the early 1760s.In the third section, I turn to a transcript from the 1770s, Metaphysics L 1 , that bears clear traces of the Inaugural Dissertation.In this transcript, Kant moves away from both the Wolffians and Crusius by requiring that metaphysics establishes itself as a purely intellectual discipline.Finally, the fourth section examines the introductory sections of two transcripts from the first half of the 1780s, Metaphysics Mrongovius and Metaphysics Volckmann, with the aim of disentangling Kant's various accounts of the task of transcendental philosophy and its relation to ontology and metaphysics.While these accounts may seem difficult to square, I consider the lecture transcripts to cast light on Kant's confusing remarks on the subject in the first Critique and so on the relationship between this work and the metaphysical system for which it was supposed to prepare the ground.3 I.Wolff, Baumgarten, and Crusius Wolff's highly influential German treatise on metaphysics, titled Rational Thoughts on God, the World, and the Soul of Human Beings, as well as all Things as such, was published in 1720 and reprinted eleven times between 1722 and 1752.While the title can be considered a preliminary definition of metaphysics, neither the preface nor the first chapters of the work contain a proper account of the nature, task, and structure of metaphysics.According to the first preface, the task of the treatise is to clarify "the first, general concepts," because in this way light can be shed on "all our knowledge, whether we are dealing with sciences or actions in human life." 4 In a preface to a later edition, Wolff refers to concepts such as "thing" and "perfection" as "first grounds of knowledge."5 The second chapter of the treatise itself, corresponding to ontology or general metaphysics, is said to deal with "the first grounds of our knowledge and all things as such" and starts with a summary discussion of the principle of non-contradiction and the concepts of possibility, actuality, and thing (Wolff 1747, §10-16).In a more classical vein, Wolff's Latin Discursus praeliminaris defines metaphysics at large as "the science of being [scientia entis], the world as such, and spirits" (Dp, §79).He considers its first part, the ontology, to deal with "being as such and the general properties of beings" (Dp, §73).Although Wolff here seems to abandon his earlier emphasis on the epistemological strand of metaphysics, if it can be called that, the difference is not a real one; seen from his perspective, the grounds of our knowledge of things are at the same time the grounds of these things themselves.Similarly, the Ontologia, first published in 1730, defines ontology both as the science of being as such

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