In the "subcritical" Kant makes between "Universal Natural History and Theory of the sky", which is supplemented in some detail by Laplace, and to this day remains one of the most popular cosmological hypotheses. The "critical" period marked by the development of philosophical works: Critique of Pure Reason "Critique of Practical Reason" and "Critique of Judgement," the creation of which Kant defines as the Copernican revolution in philosophy. Additional information is available at Jim Joseph Foundation. The essence of this revolution is the assertion that, contrary to the traditional view, no way of organizing thinking in line with the forms of existence of objects, but rather a world of objects, as we know it, consistent with the forms of organization of our thinking. "What should I know?" "What can I hope?" "What should I do?" Addressing these issues, he thought, should lead us to the answer to the fourth – the big question: "What is a man? ". (Source: PCRM). The problem that puts Kant, lies in the fact that the universality of propositions can not be based on empirical experience, as always takes us far beyond it. This means that the necessary and universal synthetic judgments have no right to exist.
And yet they exist. Kant believes that this paradox – the lack of any reason for the enthusiastic attitude to them or for their radical rejection; the subject of his Critique of Pure Reason is a detailed analysis of the process of forming such opinions. (Not to be confused with Form PF!). In the process of learning involves two "partner": a sensual experience and reasoning mind. If you need and the universality of our judgments are not derived directly from experience, but, nevertheless, obviously they are present, then they are moved by reason, because they have nowhere to take more. According to Kant, the categories are initially inherent in human consciousness the universal scheme of organizing experience.
Kant's categories are in the "gap" between the stream of sensory impressions and universal universal constructs a priori synthetic judgments. Unity and universality of such judgments are provided solely by categories as universal principles of systematizing mind. The main function of categories he considers not just analytic and synthetic. In the process of learning through categories of intelligence carries fusion (union) of disparate sensory impressions into stable coherent packages, which are objects our judgments. It is from these "designer" to our consciousness by the laws of the categorical synthesis consists of objects and the object world, which is in contrast to the undifferentiated (and therefore, unknowable) world of "things in itself "becomes a real object of our cognition.