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Kant wrote this short book because readers found his Critique of Pure Reason too difficult. In it he explains, more simply, his central question, how metaphysics is possible as a science, and his answer: our knowledge in mathematics and natural science rests on forms that the mind itself brings to experience, space, time and the categories, so that we can know the world as it appears to us but not things as they are in themselves. He credits David Hume with waking him from his 'dogmatic slumber'.
Context and significance
Published in 1783, the Prolegomena remains the best introduction to Kant's philosophy. This edition was edited by Paul Carus. Read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Hume's Enquiry.
About the author
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) spent his whole life in and around Königsberg in East Prussia, where he taught at the university for decades and kept such regular habits that, according to legend, neighbours set their clocks by his afternoon walk. He was fifty-seven when he published the Critique of Pure Reason, which changed philosophy.
Answering David Hume, who he said woke him from his dogmatic slumber, Kant asked what we can know, what we ought to do and what we may hope, and gave the world the categorical imperative and the motto of the Enlightenment, 'Dare to know'. His short essay Perpetual Peace is his most accessible work.