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Kant

The Critique of Pure Reason 

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Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

Where does The Critique fit into Kant’s works?

There are his letters to others, his study notes, students’ notes on his lectures.

The term “critical writings” are his works from 1781 forward. The “pre-critical writings” would refer to before 1781.

His 1770 – “Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World” -- makes a distinction between the sensory and intelligible world, a precursor to The Critique.

For 10 years prior to 1781, "the silent years," Kant wrote almost nothing. And after publishing The Critique, his works kept coming for almost another 20 years.

In 1783 Kant published Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, meant to popularize The Critique.

1787, the second edition of The Critique, with some significant changes.

from stanford.edu:

Scholars split Kant’s development into stages:

1. the pre-critical period (1745–1770), during which Kant works within the tradition of Leibniz/Wolff and writes his impressive early works on natural phenomena;
2. “silent decade” (1770–1781), during which Kant refrained from publishing texts other than advertisements and endorsements for classes;
3. the critical period (1781–1791), which marks the time of insights or “the astonishing decade” (Beck 1969: 433) of his critical philosophy; and
4. the post-critical period (1798–1802), often cited as works of old age.

Recent studies indicate that Kant’s philosophical development was far more unified (Schönfeld 2000), and, in terms of its stages, involved deeper continuities (Edwards 2000) than previously recognized.