Peculiar Situations

In our discussion on Wednesday we spoke about how Kant sees the Peculiar Situation that humans find ourselves in whereby we possess faculty that wants to know what it cannot know. I find this interesting because it suggests that at some point our desire for knowledge becomes futile or purely recreational.  In addition it made me consider this pure, a priori, knowledge that seems to exist as something like an essence or Truth with which humans can connect. This idea of knowledge as an essence of sorts seems to make the most sense when I consider Kant's assertion that synthetic a priori knowledge is possible.  The example of 5 + 7 = 12 forces me to consider how this judgement isn't, in fact, analytic--an identity statement in which both 5 and 7 are contained within 12.  It's a real quandary, but I like where Kant is going, and I'm excited to delve deeper into his Critique of Pure Reason.