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Full Idea
Pure reason is concerned with nothing but itself, and it can have no other concern, because what is given to it is not objects to be unified for the concept of experience, but cognitions of understanding to be unified for the concept of reason.
Gist of Idea
Pure reason is only concerned with itself because it deals with understandings, not objects
Source
Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B708/A680)
Book Ref
Kant,Immanuel: 'Critique of Pure Reason', ed/tr. Guyer,P /Wood,A W [CUO 1998], p.610
A Reaction
It is hard to accept this sharp division between 'understanding', which gets involved in experience, and this very "pure" reason, which seems in danger of solipsism, and is playing a private game. I think purity comes in degrees.
| 350 | In investigation the body leads us astray, but the soul gets a clear view of the facts [Plato] |
| 17194 | Reason only explains what is universal, so it is timeless, under a certain form of eternity [Spinoza] |
| 4840 | Reason perceives things under a certain form of eternity [Spinoza] |
| 19335 | Reasonings have a natural ordering in God's understanding, but only a temporal order in ours [Leibniz] |
| 5578 | Pure reason deals with concepts in the understanding, not with objects [Kant] |
| 5603 | Pure reason exists outside of time [Kant] |
| 5616 | Pure reason is only concerned with itself because it deals with understandings, not objects [Kant] |
| 5628 | Reason hates to be limited in its speculations [Kant] |
| 21054 | Reason enables the unbounded extension of our rules and intentions [Kant] |
| 22081 | Let thought follow its own course, and don't interfere [Hegel] |
| 10804 | Thoughts have a natural order, to which human thinking is drawn [Frege, by Yablo] |
| 8251 | The logical space of reasons is a natural phenomenon, and it is the realm of freedom [McDowell] |
| 3651 | Perceiving necessary connections is the essence of reasoning [Bonjour] |