Barry asked:

I'm a second year philosophy student and am having real trouble trying to grasp Kantian philosophy.
What we're concentrating on at the moment is his account of space and time, his transcendental
metaphysics and his assertions on knowledge and the outside world. I've tried reading his Critique of
Pure Reason, but fail repeatedly to make any sense of it at all — it's just a litany of unsupported
assertions, multifaceted definitions of vague terms (e.g. concept, intuition, judgement, predicate,
transcendental etc) that do not seem directed toward any particular end. What is the kernel of what
Kant is trying to explain? It is infuriatingly difficult to make sense of such needlessly verbose
postulating — I am crying out for someone to enlighten me in simple language, like you do so well on
this website! I am reading Terence Edward Wilkerson's commentary for students on Kant's Critique of
Pure Reason, which is easier to make sense of.

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Take a look my answer on Answers page 21.

That's one thing he's doing. Perhaps the main thrust of the whole trilogy (the three Critiques),
however, is to demonstrate that free will is possible. Not,mind you, to provethe existence of free
will... merely to show that it is possible. And what he's doing, in a sense, in the first two books, is
going through everything else,all the lawsof the mind, in order to get them out of the way so that in
the Critique of Judgment he can say, "well, we've done all that and there's stillsomething we can't
possibly explain... (i.e., what he is terming "genius") thatmust be how we can, perhaps, have free
will." Monumental, right? Wow, what a computer programmer he would have made.

Steven Ravett Brown

It so happens that I myself find Kant's prose as lucid and transparent as one could wish; and I am not
here giving you the point of view of a seasoned reader, but reflecting on my experience as a
17-year-old when I read the Critique as my first-ever philosophy book. Why I am telling you this is to
warn you that the prejudices to which your question testifies is just about the greatest ill favour you
can do yourself in approaching a philosopher. Legions of informed readers assess this work as
possibly the greatest philosophy book ever written; but in your 7 lines I find "litany", "verbose" and
"infuriating" and therefore I cannot help wondering what kind of a dressing down you are going to dish
out to Einstein when you get around to having to solve his state equations. Or do you think you might
possibly adopt a humbler attitude then? Or is it too far fetched of me to believe that with Einstein you
might stand in awe at the man's intellect because you may not understand his mathematics, but
because Kant happens to write in German (or English, if you're reading a translation) you think you
have to understand everything the moment you start reading?

Anyway Im glad you are reading Wilkerson to help you along. My best suggestion is that you take the
above to heart and start again.Then you might find that the ideas of Kant are by no means
unsupported, vague or any of the other crimes of which you accuse him, but are relatively clear-cut
except in those passages where additionally you are required to know something of the general
historical and cultural background. Now that's why a guide is indispensable, because it saves you
reading all the philosophers before and adjacent to Kant. And then, once you have successfully
accomplished that task, you'll feel much better about philosophy in general and Kant in particular. And
possibly (this is what one hopes for after all) also a lot better about yourself and your ability to meet
such challenges in the future without having to vent your frustration.

Jürgen Lawrenz

Sydney