47 pages 1 hour read

Immanuel Kant

Critique of Practical Reason

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1788

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Index of Terms

A Priori

Any thought or conclusion that is a priori comes purely from reason and intuition. It exists prior to any direct empirical evidence. An example of an a priori statement would be “Green apples are not red.”

Antimony

An antimony is a pair of rational statements, a thesis and an antithesis, that contradict each other, yet are rationally true. Immanuel Kant identifies several apparent antimonies that emerge from attempts to use speculative reason to understand the transcendent and metaphysical. One example Kant himself gives is “either the desire for happiness must be the motive to maxims of virtue or the maxim of virtue must be the efficient cause of happiness” (92).

Autonomy

Autonomy is the ability of a rational being to act with free will, unrestrained by external forces. Kant believes every rational being possesses autonomy, rather than heteronomy, which is when a rational being is constrained by external forces and circumstances.