CRITICISM, CRITIQUE (Kritik),—(1) test of the merits of a work; (2) employed by Kant to designate a philosophy attained by critical discrimination of those elements of knowledge which are given by the Understanding or by the Reason, in contrast with those derived from experience. «That all our knowledge begins with experience admits of no doubt… but it by no means follows that all arises out of experience… It is, therefore, a question… whether there exists a knowledge altogether independent of experience, and even of all sensuous impressions? Knowledge of this kind is called à priori in contradistinction to empirical knowledge, which has sources à posteriori, that is, in experience… From all that has been said, there results the idea of a particular science, which may be called the Critique of Pure Reason. For reason is the faculty which furnishes us with the principles of knowledge à priori… We can regard a science of the mere criticism of pure reason, its source and limits, as the propædeutic to a system of pure reason. Such a science must not be called a Doctrine, but only a Critique of Pure Reason» (Kant’s introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason).— V. TRANSCENDENTAL.
