PRELIMINARY REMARKS.
De re, quæ agitur, petimus, ut homines, eam non opinionem, sed opus esse, cogitent ac pro certo habeant, non sectæ nos alicujus, aut placiti, sed utilitatis et amplitudinis humanæ fundamenta moliri. Deinde, ut, suis commodis æqui, in commune consulant, et ipsi in partem veniant.—Baco de Verulamio.
The author of the Science of Knowledge was soon convinced, through a slight acquaintance with the philosophical literature since the appearance of Kant’s Critiques, that the object of this great man—to effect a total reform in the study of philosophy, and hence of all science—had resulted in a failure, since not one of his numerous successors appeared to understand what he had really spoken of. The author believed that he had understood the latter; he resolved to devote his life to a representation—totally independent from Kant’s—of that great discovery, and he will not give up this resolve. Whether he will succeed better in making himself understood to his age, time alone can show. At all events, he knows that nothing true and useful, which has once been given to mankind, is lost, though only remote posterity should learn how to use it.
Determined by my academical vocation, I wrote, in the first instance, for my hearers, with whom it was in my power to explain myself in words until I was understood.
This is not the place to testify how much cause I have to be satisfied with my efforts, and to entertain, of some of my students, the best hopes for science. That book of mine has also become known elsewhere, and there are various opinions afloat concerning it amongst the learned. A judgment, which even pretended to bring forth arguments, I have neither read nor heard, except from my students; but I have both heard and read a vast amount of derision, denunciation, and the general assurance that everybody is heartily opposed to this doctrine, and the confession that no one can understand it. As far as the latter is concerned, I will cheerfully assume all the blame, until others shall represent it so as to make it comprehensible, when students will doubtless discover that my representation was not so very bad after all; or I will assume it altogether and unconditionally, if the reader thereby should be encouraged to study the present representation, in which I shall endeavor to be as clear as possible. I shall continue these representations so long as I am convinced that I do not write altogether in vain. But I write in vain when nobody examines my argument.
I still owe my readers the following explanations: I have always said, and say again, that my system is the same as Kant’s. That is to say, it contains the same view of the subject, but is totally independent of Kant’s mode of representation. I have said this, not to cover myself by a great authority, or to support my doctrine except by itself, but in order to say the truth and to be just.
Perhaps it may be proven after twenty years. Kant is as yet a sealed book, and what he has been understood to teach, is exactly what he intended to eradicate.
My writings are neither to explain Kant, nor to be explained by his; they must stand by themselves, and Kant must not be counted in the game at all. My object is—let me say it frankly—not to correct or amplify such philosophical reflections as may be current, be they called anti-Kant or Kant, but to totally eradicate them, and to effect a complete revolution in the mode of thinking regarding these subjects, so that hereafter the Object will be posited and determined by Knowledge (Reason), and not vice versa; and this seriously, not merely in words.
Let no one object: “If this system is true, certain axioms cannot be upheld,” for I do not intend that anything should be upheld which this system refutes.
Again: “I do not understand this book,” is to me a very uninteresting and insignificant confession. No one can and shall understand my writings, without having studied them; for they do not contain a lesson heretofore taught, but something—since Kant has not been understood—altogether new to the age.