Book description
IMMANUEL KANTS CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON translated by NORMAN KEMP SMITH.
Originally published in 1929. PREFACE: THE present translation was begun
in 1913, when I was com pleting my Commentary to Kants Critique of Pure
Reason Owing, however, to various causes, I was unable at that time to
do more than prepare a rough translation of about a third of the whole
and it was not until 1927 that I found leisure to revise and continue
it. In this task I have greatly profited by the work of my two
predecessors, J. M. D. Meiklejohn and Max Muller. Meiklejohns work, a
translation of the second edition of the Critique was published in 1855.
Max Miillers translation, which is based on the first edition of the
Critique, with the second edition passages in appendices, was published
in 1 88 1. Meiklejohn has a happy gift which only those who attempt to
follow in his steps can, I think, fully appreciate of making Kant speak
in language that reasonably approxi mates to English idiom. Max Miillers
main merit, as he has very justly claimed, is his greater accuracy in
render ing passages in which a specially exact appreciation of the
niceties of German idiom happens to be important for the sense. Both
Meiklejohn and Max Miiller laboured, however, under the disadvantage of
not having made any very thorough study of the Critical Philosophy and
the shortcomings in their translations can usually be traced to this
cause. In the past fifty years, also, much has been done in the study
and interpretation of the text. In particular, my task has been
facilitated by the quite invaluable edition of the Critique edited by
Dr. Raymund Schmidt. Indeed, the ap pearance of this edition in 1926 was
the immediate occasion of my resuming the work of translation. Dr.
Schmidts restoration of the original texts of the first and second
editions of the Critique, and especially of Kants own punctuation so
very helpful in many difficult and doubtful passages and his cita tion
of alternative readings, have largely relieved me of the time-consuming
task of collating texts, and of assembling the emendations suggested by
Kantian scholars in their editions of the Critique or in their writings
upon it. The text which I have followed is that of the second edition i
787 and I have in all cases indicated any departure from it. I have also
given a translation of all first edition passages which in the second
edition have been either altered or omitted. Wherever possible, this
original first edition text is given in the lower part of the page. In
the two sections, however, which Kant completely recast in the second
edition The Transcendental Deduction of the Categories and The
Paralogisms of Pure Reason this cannot conveniently be done and I have
therefore given the two versions in immediate succession, in the main
text. For this somewhat unusual procedure there is a twofold
justification first, that the Critique is already, in itself, a
composite work, the different parts of which record the successive
stages in the development of Kants views and secondly, that the first
edition versions are, as a matter of fact, indispensable for an adequate
under standing of the versions which were substituted for them. The
pagings of both the first and the second edition are given throughout,
on the margins the first edition being referred to as A, the second
edition as B. Kants German, even when judged by German standards, makes
difficult reading. The difficulties are not due merely to the
abstruseness of the doctrines which Kant is endeavouring to expound, or
to his frequent alternation between conflicting points of view. Many of
the difficulties are due simply to his manner of writing...
