Philosophy as Thinking the World According to the Principle of Least Effort

However, as the desire was no less present to offer the writing to a more comprehensive circle of readers, composed of diverse elements and thus determined by entirely different assumptions, consideration for them demanded, here and there, explanations that some might consider too extensive or too far-fetched. For the same reason, finally, the manner of viewing and expression has been used in the introduction and elsewhere which, as the most widespread or best known, seemed to contain the relatively most favorable conditions for the purpose of rapid orientation in the mediating concepts.

If, as admitted, a larger and more diverse circle of readers was desired for the present Prolegomena, then this desire was prompted by the keenly felt need to obtain the most versatile criticism possible by supplementing the individual judgments that are to be hoped for. A conception which, like the one set down here, regards every individual formation of thought—and thus also one's own—more as something foreign than as something of one's own, since it recognizes the same as determined to a by far greater part by the general development of thought—a conception which at the same time does not conceal how many influences of human-subjective prejudice still intervene, hindering and clouding the remaining part of apparently free individual development: such a conception has little reason to shy away from a just judgment, guided purely by theoretical interests. Rather, it is ready to learn from the