<i>The Critique of Pure Reason</i> by Immanuel Kant was first published in 1781 and discusses and critiques prevailing ideas of the time concerning the method of philosophy, the limits of knowledge and much more. This is Kant's first major published work of philosophy which started his career and paved the way for his new form of thinking. The <i>Critique</i> is divided into many sections and categories, all contributing to Kant's complete thought, which can make the book difficult to interpret, but his clarity aids greatly to understanding him despite the length of his points. The first division of this work is between the main two parts, the “Doctrine of Elements” and the “Doctrine of Method”, the first arguing the limits of knowledge and logic as understood by previous philosophers (such as Descartes and Locke) and the latter where he discusses the contrasts of his thinking with his contemporaries and discusses the method of philosophical thought (Guyer). These categories are once again divided into more and more subcategories, but the details of these categories, while pivotal to understanding completely his thought, are less essential for arguing why the work needs to be preserved in a time capsule. These details, however, were of much greater importance to some, as Kant's work was largely censored by the ruling class of Germany in the late 18<sup>th</sup> to early 19<sup>th</sup> centuries. Scholars have dedicated their entire academic lives to studying Kant and his works, but only a few of his points will be discussed here in an effort to effectively argue reasons to preserve this piece for generations to come. Kant's <i>Critique of Pure Reason </i>should be preserved because of his contributions to philosophical methodology and his new genre known as transcendental idealism.

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In the 18<sup>th</sup> century, the world was a dynamic place ripe with political revolution and monumental advances in thinking. Less than ten years prior to Kant's first publication of the <i>Critique</i>, Britain's North American colonies declared independence from the mother country in honor of Locke's ideas of natural rights and their violation by the tyrannical British monarchy (Foner). Another large-scale revolution was to take place in France where Robespierre began his path to a liberal French society, one that abolished local aristocratic rule for a short time effectively, but devolved into self-destructive violence during the so-called Reign of Terror. Catholicism and Protestantism were the two dominant sects of Christianity at the time and were being questioned with more rigorous arguments and thorough critiques. Many of the more daring people who criticized or otherwise questioned the authority of God or the legitimacy of the Church had their works removed from circulation, censored, or were excommunicated (Guyer).

Before Kant's time, in the 17<sup>th</sup> century, John Locke was writing his essays on government and the rights of individuals. These writings led to his empiricist developments in thought, that is, that all thought including logic and judgments derive from lived experiences. He believed that individuals were born as a “blank slate”, a passive recipient of information. Further advances in philosophy led to the thought that reason was the means to “discovering the nature of reality” (Fiero). Descartes was a primary contributor to this idea of the dominance of reason, claiming that an unbiased mind was the only “sure point of departure for the truth” noting that the senses could be easily deceived (Fiero). These two giants of thought influenced philosophers for years to come, they also dominated and polarized the field of philosophy while adhering to the idea that reason was the route to intellectual prominence. Kant, however, took the two (and the thoughts of many others), criticized, critiqued, and synthesized them to provide an all encompassing argument for his method of transcendental idealism.

Kant believed in an active mind, that people were actively involved in the process of knowing the world; this was the transcendental idealism he argued for and his idea established him as a powerful influence on works to come. In contrast to heavy reliance on reason alone like Descartes or Locke (albeit in different ways), Kant claimed that reality “consists of the mind” and the ways the mind takes in the environment (Fiero). His categorical structure in the <i>Critique</i>, however, was indicative of other German philosophical and logical texts of the time. This setup of categories within categories, hierarchies of various divisions of thought, are essential to his points and aid to his clarity, but also allowed many points to appear various times throughout the work to prove others (Merritt).

In the time of Kant's writing, society-at-large wasn't as prepared for written critiques as they were for advances in the visual arts, which isn't to say that all of the visual arts were renowned upon their conception. The Gottingen Review, wirtten by a then anonymous source, criticized Kant's <i>Critique</i> weeks after it was published, causing a direct response from Kant to put down any misconceptions and inconsistencies in his thought. In his <i>Prolegomena</i>, he responded to the review in the appendix stating that the author had been motivated by “'impatience at thinking out a lengthy work or... real narrow-mindedness...'” (Kant, Mensch). The identity of the review's author was soon released to Kant through a personal apology letter stating the troubles of the review and the author's own incompetence in his review. Another importance point of the <i>Critique'</i>s impact in Kant's era is that his writing was censored and removed from circulation in universities in the 18<sup>th</sup> and early 19<sup>th</sup> century, thus proving that the academic and ruling classes weren't ready for such a thorough attack on popular thinking.

Today, scholars have lived and died studying the intricacies of Kant's thought, his critiques, his terminology, his method, and his relation to all other schools of thought before and after him. Many debates have been sparked on the definitions of German words he uses that appear to have the same meaning. For an English speaker/reader, for instance, the words “Realität” and “Wirklichkeit” can have the same connotation to be “real”, but an important distinction is made to better understand his thoughts on “quality” and “modality” (Mensch). “Wirklichkeit” more closely means “existence” whereas “Realität” better describes physical sensation and it's intensity (Mensch). These debates have helped to further clarify Kant to observe more effectively his true intentions, if anyone could really know them. The language Kant wrote in, German, has long since evolved like other languages since the 18<sup>th</sup> century, showing that this is a particularly modern problem, especially since a large amount of Kant-scholars are English-speaking (Mensch).

To articulate a complete thought about Kant's <i>Critique of Pure Reason</i> is a feat that most people, even in Western society, find difficult and often have not attempted. I find traces of Kant in books I am reading currently and these traces are the fragments I need to completely understand what I'm reading. In Guy Debord's <i>Society of the Spectacle</i>, the surreal quality of representations pervades every aspect of life in late-capitalistic societies, and Kant's distinction of representations from reality helped greatly in understanding exactly where Debord's thought originates from. Kant is pivotal in helping me develop my thoughts into coherence and has the potential to be applied to modern thinking more effectively than his contemporaries. His impact is underrated, as very few can escape his conclusions.

Immanuel Kant's <i>Critique of Pure Reason </i>has had an incredible impact on thinking for two hundred years and it's worth will be realized only if the work is preserved for future generations to ponder. The conclusions came to by Kant and those who followed his thoughts and expounded upon them are revolutionary and offer insights that, with a little bit of faith, provide readers with inescapable truths. To abandon the <i>Critique of Pure Reason</i> in our time capsule is to abandon critique as a science; society needs critique if those who populate it are ever to hope for their freedom as individuals. Kant's method and transcendental idealism are important for those who have questions about the past, present, and future.

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<p align="center">Works Cited</p>
 Anderson, Pamela Sue. “Pure Reason and Contemporary Philosophy of Religion: The Rational Striving In and For Truth.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 68.1-3 (2010): 95-106. Academic Search Complete. Web. 10 Oct. 2013.

Fiero, Gloria. <i>The Humanistic Tradition Book 3,</i> <i>The European Renaissance, The Reformation, And Global Encounter.</i> 6<sup>th</sup>. McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages, 2010. 10 Oct. 2013.

Kant, Immanuel. <i>Critique of Pure Reason (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant). </i>Cambridge University Press, 1999. 10 Oct. 2013.

Mensch, Jennifer. “Kant And The Problem Of Idealism: On the Significance of the Gottingen Review.” Southern Journal of Philosophy 44.2 (2006): 297-317. Academic Search Complete. Web. 10 Oct. 2013.