Causality
It was
David Hume's problem of defining
causality that famously awakened
Immanuel Kant from his "dogmatic slumbers." Kant called Hume's problem the
crux metaphysicorum (
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, §29). Kant said
My object is to persuade all those who think Metaphysics
worth studying, that it is absolutely necessary to pause a
moment, and, neglecting all that has been done, to propose first
the preliminary question, ’Whether such a thing as metaphysics be
at all possible?’...
Since the Essays of Locke and Leibniz, or rather since the
origin of metaphysics so far as we know its history, nothing has
ever happened which was more decisive to its fate than the attack
made upon it by David Hume... Hume started from a single but important concept in
Metaphysics, viz., that of Cause and Effect. He challenges reason, which
pretends to have given birth to this idea from herself, to answer
him by what right she thinks anything to be so constituted, that
if that thing be posited, something else also must necessarily be
posited; for this is the meaning of the concept of cause. He
demonstrated irrefutably that it was perfectly impossible for
reason to think a priori and by means of concepts a combination
involving necessity.
(Prolegomena, Introduction)
Kant's "synthetic
a priori" project hoped to show that
necessity is "analytic" (true by logic and reason alone) and a "concept of the understanding" that can apply to
experience - the realm of synthetic knowledge.
Normal |
Teacher |
Scholar
|
|
|
