Metacritique of the Critique of Pure Reason

Introduction

Herder had attended Kant’s lectures in Königsberg as a student; in 1799, eighteen years after the Critique of Pure Reason, he published this attack on it in two parts. He argues that Kant separates faculties of the mind that belong together and overlooks that all thought is bound to language and experience. The title takes up a term from Johann Georg Hamann, whose short “Metacritique on the Purism of Reason”, written in 1784, Herder knew in manuscript. Contemporaries regarded the book as polemical and late, and Kant’s followers rejected it. Later philosophy of language has shown more interest in its central thesis.

Connections

Criticizes

• Critique of Pure Reason1781 · Immanuel Kant

More works by Johann Gottfried Herder

• 1772Treatise on the Origin of Language