The Prolegomena positions itself against two opposed errors about metaphysics. Which pair does Kant reject, and what is his 'third way'?
What is Kant's 'decisive move' in response to Hume's problem of causation — the step Hume himself never took?
In Kant's technical vocabulary, the 'dogmatism' from which Hume woke him is:
The Prolegomena proceeds by the 'analytic method' yet argues that mathematics consists of 'synthetic judgments.' How do these two uses of 'analytic' relate?
Why does Kant classify '7 + 5 = 12' as synthetic rather than analytic?
Cross 'analytic/synthetic' with 'a priori/a posteriori.' Which box did the empiricists wrongly declare empty, and which is genuinely empty?
Why must the intuition grounding pure mathematics be a PURE intuition, not an empirical one?
Which statement best captures transcendental idealism paired with empirical realism, as Kant distinguishes it from Berkeley?
What does Kant mean by 'pure natural science,' and how does he define 'nature' in Part II (§14)?
'The sun warms the stone' is a judgment of experience; 'when the sun shines, the stone grows warm' only a judgment of perception. What must be ADDED to get the first from the second?
From what does Kant derive the twelve categories, and what is their function?
Kant's thesis that 'the understanding does not draw its laws from nature but prescribes them to nature' (§36) answers Hume by:
How do reason's 'ideas' differ from the understanding's 'categories,' and to which traditional sciences do the three ideas correspond?
Kant resolves the four antinomies by exposing one hidden premise, but the two types resolve differently. Which is correct?
Kant's verdicts on the soul and on God share a single structural point. Which statement captures both correctly?
How does the limit/boundary (Schranke/Grenze) distinction let Kant conclude that metaphysics IS possible as a science?
✍️ Open answer · AI-graded
Trace the single continuous argument that carries Kant from '7 + 5 = 12' all the way to transcendental idealism — and show that it is one argument, not a series of separate claims. Then explain how the very same strategy is applied a second time, in Part II, to secure pure natural science. Be explicit about the DIRECTION in which the argument runs.
What to cover: Start from the analytic (regressive) method and the fact of synthetic a priori mathematics; move through pure intuition to space and time as forms of sensibility, and hence to appearances and transcendental idealism (with empirical realism, and the contrast with Berkeley). Then show the parallel move in Part II: as space and time are sensibility's a priori forms, the categories are the understanding's, so the understanding prescribes law to nature. Throughout, stress that the argument runs FROM the given sciences TO idealism, not the reverse.
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✍️ Open answer · AI-graded
How does the Prolegomena answer Hume without collapsing back into dogmatism — and at what cost? Reconstruct the answer to Hume, show why the same critique that defeats scepticism also disciplines the dogmatist's ambitions about the soul, the world-whole, and God, and then state, as an honest examiner expects, the price Kant pays for the whole settlement.
What to cover: Set out Hume's problem and Kant's generalization of it; give the answer (perception vs experience, the category of cause, the understanding prescribing laws to nature); then show that the very boundary that secures science also blocks knowledge of the super-sensible (paralogism, antinomies, failed proofs of God), so scepticism is beaten without dogmatism. Finish with the costs: knowledge confined to appearances, and the unknowable-yet-operative thing-in-itself and the merely regulative ideas of reason.
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