Critique of Pure Reason

An Abridged Translation for College Students

Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Riga: J. F. Hartknoch, 1781), 856 pp. 2nd (B) ed: 1787. [A-edition (Ak. 4:5-252); B-edition (Ak. 3:2-552)]. “Critique of Pure Reason.” Translated by Norman Kemp Smith (Macmillan 1929). Translated by Werner Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett 1996). Translated by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood in Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge University Press, 1997).

“In the current Easter book fair there will appear a book of mine, entitled Critique of Pure Reason […] This book contains the result of all the varied investigations that start from the concepts we debated together under the heading mundi sensibilis and mundi intelligibilis.” — thus begins Kant’s letter to Marcus Herz from 1 May 1781 (Ak. 10:266).

Kant’s own copy of this book was housed at the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Königsberg, before being lost in 1945. Fortunately Kant’s marginalia had already been printed at Ak. 23:17-50, as well as in Erdmann [1881]; they are also included in the Guyer/Wood translation.