In the Prolegomena, Kant states that reading David Hume, "awakened him from his dogmatic slumber." It was Hume's An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding that made Kant aware of issues and prejudices in his life that he had previously been unaware of. This further prompted Kant to respond to Hume with his own analysis on the theory of metaphysics. Kant did not feel that Hume dealt with these matters adequately and resolved to pick up where Hume had left off, specifically addressing the question of whether metaphysics as a science is possible.

Hume basically asserted in his writings that metaphysics, as a science, is not possible. He specifically drew on the theory of "causality", which is the attempt by people to rationalize situations. These rationalizations deal with the experience of cause and effect. People tend to attribute patterns to things according to their cause and effect. For example, gravity causes the anything that goes up to come down- we have become so used to this principle that we have made a very definitive statement on the subject. Hume however, attacks this principle by claiming that we have not experienced every instance of this matter. It is not t

Brought to light now are more of Kant's theories, influenced of course by Hume. Synthetic judgements- as opposed to analytical judgements- are judgements based on experience. A priori is another term that he uses as well. It is defined by Hume as uninfluenced by experience. Essentially he is asking a question that doesn't seem possible- can we make judgements based on experience, with out actually experiencing it.

Kant's work is a little more difficult to examine. The one flaw that stands out is that Kant, like Hume, found an obstacle and did not try to make sense of it, rather they both just accepted it. Kant could not explain metaphysics on a transcendent level, so he simply turned to faith to justify the existence of it. He stood by faith much like Hume stood by skepticism. He relies blindly on faith to explain a large part of what he is trying to discredit Hume for. It is almost as if he is not making a definitive statement on the existence of metaphysics. Rather, he is caught in the middle, claiming that it may be true in one instance, but not in another.

Here Kant encounters a problem in his theories on metaphysics and the repercussions on his thoughts about sensibility. Spatial and temporal indicators only present the world in terms of human understanding but Kant is aware that there is a world that exists outside of this. He applies matters of faith to believe in things as they are in themselves, but he cannot explain them fully through science. He admits that there is a world that exists independently of our experience, but we also have a need to process things spatially and temporally, so the two can not exist together. He identifies this with his theories of phenomena and noumena. Phenomena explains the way we see things; how the world appears to us, while noumena explains the more abstract theory of the world outside of our structures and functions.

Kant's next step is crucial in dealing with the problem of metaphysics. He now takes what he calls the Copernican turn. Like Copernicus, Kant believes that we should not look to what we experience, but rather how we experience. Copernicus, in his theory on t

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