This illumination of the critical and philosophical method involves a comparison with contemporary methods.

Although the content of his critical philosophy is entirely contained within the Elements, Kant elaborates on its methods in the former. The second major section of the Critique, the 'Doctrine of Method', is often neglected after digesting the long and dense first doctrine. This is the general structure of the Doctrine of Elements.

The formal conditions for thinking, judging, and cognizing are presented in the section of the Logic known as the 'Transcendental Analytic' while the overt and systematic criticism of the metaphysical use of reason occurs in the 'transcendental Dialectic'. In the second part of the first doctrine, he covers the use and misuse of the understanding through the 'Transcendental Logic'. Kant analyzes the former in the 'Transcendental Aesthetic', individually expounding the two formal conditions of directly representing objects. This section subdivides according to the two faculties which Kant primarily investigates - our sensibility and our understanding. A simple approach to understanding the comprehensiveness of this text is to focus initially on its primary body, the 'Doctrine of Elements'. The architecture of the Critique can seem daunting to first-time readers. His chosen method for achieving this goal was a criticism of the human faculty of reason itself. In short, Kant sought to establish metaphysics as a science. Kant's stated purpose in the Critique of Pure Reason (CPR) is to bring metaphysics, inquiry striving for knowledge independently of experience, onto the secure course of sciences such as logic and physics. Published in two editions (first in 1781 and second in 1787), this book was the first of the three critiques that together present the core of Kantian philosophy. Using the methods of science, Kant demonstrates that though each mind may, indeed, create its own universe, those universes are guided by certain common laws, which are rationally discernible.The Critique of Pure Reason ( Kritik der reinen Vernunft) is a philosophical text by Immanuel Kant on epistemology and metaphysics. Kant saw the Critique of Pure Reason as an attempt to bridge the gap between rationalism (there are significant ways in which our concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience) and empiricism (sense experience is the ultimate source of all our concepts and knowledge) and, in particular, to counter the radical empiricism of David Hume (our beliefs are purely the result of accumulated habits, developed in response to accumulated sense experiences). The Critique of Pure Reason, first published in 1781 with a second edition in 1787, has been called the most influential and important philosophical text of the modern age. Translated by John Miller Dow Meiklejohn (1836 - 1902)

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Critique of practical reason