Metaphysics has as the proper object of its enquiries three ideas only: God, freedom, and immortality. (B 395)
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Metaphysics focuses on only three ideas: God, freedom, and immortality. These are the proper limits of metaphysical inquiry.
- In plain terms
- Metaphysics only studies God, freedom, and life after death.
- What can you take from it?
- Limit metaphysics to three core ideas.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- Are there other fundamental ideas?
- Why these three?
Another view
It restricts inquiry into other important topics.
More from Immanuel Kant
A plant, an animal, the regular order of nature-probably also the disposition of the whole universe-give manifest evidence that they are possible only by means…
Permalink to quote #25 Human reason is by nature architectonic. (B 502)
Permalink to quote #27 Thoughts without intuitions are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. (B 75)
Permalink to quote #24
Related quotes
The ideal power with which we feel ourselves in connection, the 'God' of ordinary men, is, both by ordinary men and by philosophers, endowed with certain of th…
William JamesWilliam James quote #87 The Ethiops say that their gods are flat-nosed and black, While the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair. Yet if cattle or horses or lions had…
XenophanesXenophanes quote #3 The meaning of life, i.e. the meaning of the world, we can call God.
Ludwig WittgensteinLudwig Wittgenstein quote #6