HUME TO HEGEL experience; we know it a priori if we know it independently of all experience Kant agreed with Locke that all our knowledge begins with experience, but he did not believe that it all arose from experience There are some things that we know a priori, fundamental truths that are not mere generalizations from experience Among the judgements that we make a priori some, Kant says, are analytic, and some are synthetic In an analytic judgement, such as ‘all bodies are extended’, we are merely making explicit in the predicate something that is already contained in the concept of the subject But in a synthetic judgement the predicate adds something to the content of the subject: Kant’s example is ‘all bodies are heavy’ All a posteriori propositions are synthetic, and all analytic propositions are a priori Can there be propositions that are synthetic, and yet a priori? Kant believes that there are For him, mathematics oVers examples of synthetic a priori truths Most importantly, there must be propositions that are both a priori and synthetic if it is ever going to be possible to make a genuine science out of metaphysics The philosopher’s Wrst task is to make plain the nature and limits of the powers of the mind Like medieval and rationalist philosophers before him, Kant distinguishes sharply between the senses and the intellect; but within the intellect he makes a new distinction of his own between understanding (Verstand) and reason (Vernunft) The understanding operates in combination with the senses in order to provide human knowledge: through the senses, objects are given us; through the understanding, they are made thinkable Experience has a content, provided by the senses, and a structure, determined by the understanding Reason, by contrast with understanding, is the intellect’s endeavour to go beyond what understanding can achieve When divorced from experience it is ‘pure reason’, and it is this which is the target of Kant’s criticism Before addressing pure reason, Kant’s Critique makes a systematic study of the senses and the understanding The senses are studied in a section entitled ‘Transcendental Aesthetic’, and the understanding in a section entitled ‘Transcendental Logic’ ‘Transcendental’ is a favourite word of Kant’s; he used it with several meanings, but common to all of them is the notion of something which (for better or worse) goes beyond and behind the deliverances of actual experience The transcendental aesthetic is largely devoted to the study of space and time Sensations, Kant says, have a matter (or content) and a form Space is 103