Rene Descartes'la başlayan Yeniçağ (moderne) felsefesinde 'düşünen ben' —yine Descartes'ın deyişiyle res cogitans— gün ışığına çıkarılmıştır. Kant, 'düşünen ben'in biçimsel düşünme —demekki duygudan soyutlanmış— işleyişini kendine araştırma konusu kılmıştır. 'Duyumlayan ben'in irdelenmesi 'psikoloji'nin işi olmasına karşılık, 'düşünen ben'in 'biçimsel düşünme işleyişi'ni (mecanisme) incelemek bir 'transsendental' işlemdir. Bu ödevi omuzlamak da filosofa düşer. 'Duyumlayan psikolojik ben'den farklı olarak, 'biçimsel düşünen transsendental özne', ahlâk ile (bilimsel) bilgi binasının mimarıdır. Kant'ın inşâa etmiş olduğu muazzam felsefe yapısı (sistemi), yeni bir Çığırın pınarıdır. Bu yeni oluşum, zamanla Alman transsendental idealism çığırının zeminini hazırlayacaktır.

There are three main stations on the 'philosophical track' of the history of philosophy-science, namely Aristotle, Rene Descartes and Immanuel Kant. For a thoroughly professional grasp of philosophy in general and any of its special domains of research in particular, the study of these philosophers' systems is indespensable. Moreover, in order to comprehend the epistemology of science in its broader sense, and of specific sciences, again, it is crucial to fall back on a minute enquiry of the above-named philosophers' respective systems. The last of the so-called triumvirate, Immanuel Kant's system is the ultimate stage of philosophy-science systematization. He reversed, even revolutionized the precartesian metaphysical venture by asserting that instead, the being (object) as such, the cognizing transcendental subject's aperceptive capacities should be scrutinized. By doing so, the boundaries of sense could be discovered. This, in turn, would demonstrate to us "that a certain minimum structure is essential to any conception of experience which we can make truly intelligible to ourselves." On the other hand, "the attempt to extend beyond the limits of experience the use of structural concepts, or of any other concepts, leads only to claims empty of meaning. Dogmatic rationalism exceeds the upper bound of sense, as classical empiricism falls short of the lower."* In this way Kant construed and subsequently built up a "non-speculative metaphysical' system which supplied the framework of a new philosophical tradition, known as the German (transcendental) Idealism. All subsequent attempts of establishing fresh philosophy-science systems, whether of the speculative or non-speculative metaphysical order, by German philosopher-scientists, could be traced back to Immanuel Kant's endeavour. Finally, it has been witnessed that from certain German speculative metaphysical constructs, in the early Twentieth century, an ideology has sprung forth. That ideology's wish and claim was to form an alternative civilization to the existing contemporaneous globalizing Anglo-Judaic one. However the ensuing (Second World) war, maybe,the only one in history fought ferociously on ideological grounds, put an abrupt end to the above-mentioned assertion. In our lengthy essay below, written in Turkish, we try to find out the cultural, historical and geographical background-coordinates within which Immanuel Kant s personality as well as his transcendental critical system could be understood and explained.