Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

The eminent philosopher delivers an illuminating interpretation of Kant's magnum opus in what is itself a significant work of Western philosophy.

The text of Martin Heidegger's 1927–28 university lecture course on Emmanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason presents a close interpretive reading of the first two parts of this masterpiece of modern philosophy. In this course, Heidegger continues the task he enunciated in Being and Time as the problem of dismantling the history of ontology, using temporality as a clue.


Heidegger demonstrates that the relation between philosophy, ontology, and fundamental ontology is rooted in the genesis of the modern mathematical sciences. He also shows that objectification of beings as beings is inseparable from knowledge a priori, the central problem of Kant's Critique. He concludes that objectification rests on the productive power of imagination, a process that involves temporality, which is the basic constitution of humans as beings.