pure reason
Mind without experience
Pure reason is the faculty of reasoning from abstract principles alone, without relying on sensory experience or empirical observation.
The term is most associated with Kant's *Critique of Pure Reason*, which examines what the mind can know independently of experience.
In everyday use, pure reason often contrasts with emotion, intuition, or practical considerations: He approached the problem through pure reason, ignoring how people actually behave.
- moral lawCode of right conduct
- synthetic a prioriNecessary truths that expand knowledge
- a prioriIndependent of experience
- metaphysicsPhilosophy of existence's nature
- abstractionDistilling to essential qualities
a priori knowledge · categorical imperative · thing in itself · antinomy · rationalism · first principles · deontology · logic · rational being · deduction · ethical principles · Kant · concepts · epistemology · armchair philosophy · ivory tower · inference · enlightenment
- German PhilosophyKant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Heidegger
- German IdealismKant, Hegel, Fichte, absolute, dialectic
- KantKant, categorical imperative, a priori, thing-in-itself, noumena
- Kantian PhilosophyKant, categorical imperative, a priori, a priori knowledge, noumena
- pure reasona priori, synthetic a priori, self-evident truth, first principles
- reasoninglogic, inference, deductive, analysis, inductive
pure reasonempiricism
Knowledge through observation
observation · induction · lived experience · experimentation · practical experience
pure reasonemotion
Complex psychological state
passion · feeling · instinct · irrationality · unreason
pure reasonpractical reason
Faculty directing moral action
pragmatism · naturalism · materialism · phenomenology · existentialism
reason, pure, purity, reasoning, purify, reasonable, purely, impure, impurity