The Pre-Critical Period

Abstract

Promotion for Kant did not materialize until 1770, when in March of that year he was appointed professor Ordinarius of logic and metaphysics in his university.1 His elevation was not only a landmark in his professional career, it may also be seen as the turning-point in his development as a philosophical thinker. Hitherto his interests had to a large extent been scientific, but after 1770, the period of gestation of his ‘critical’ doctrine, he dedicated himself more or less exclusively to the philosophical pursuits for which his name was to become world-famous. Not that his scientific concern faded, nor that he stood less firmly by the Newtonian physics, the general validity of which he fully accepted. But his efforts henceforth were concentrated on the immense philosophical enterprise which culminated in the publication, over the space of some ten years, of the three great Critiques and his attempt therein to reconcile the world of Newtonian science with that of moral experience and religious faith. His inaugural dissertation, ‘On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World’, was the significant pointer to the new paths his thought was to follow.