Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher who is a central figure in modern philosophy. He argued that human concepts and categories structure our view of the world and its laws, and that reason is the source of morality. His thought continues to have a major influence in contemporary thought, especially the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political theory, and aesthetics.

Life

Immanuel Kant was born in 1724 in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). His mother, Anna Regina Reuter (1697–1737), was born in Königsberg to a father from Nuremberg. His father, Johann Georg Kant (1682–1746), was a German harness maker from Memel, at the time Prussia's most northeastern city (now Klaipėda, Lithuania).

Work

Kant's most original contribution to philosophy is his "Copernican Revolution," that, as he puts it, it is the representation that makes the object possible rather than the object that makes the representation possible. This introduced the human mind as an active originator of experience rather than just a passive recipient of perception.

Philosophy

Kant's philosophy is generally termed as critical philosophy to distinguish it from the earlier dogmatic philosophy. His main works, the Critique of Pure Reason, the Critique of Practical Reason, and the Critique of Judgment, aim to reconcile the empirical and rationalist traditions through a critical examination of their strengths and weaknesses.

Legacy

Kant's work has had a major influence on a wide range of philosophical movements, theories and thinkers. Notably, Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer, John Stuart Mill, and Jacques Derrida have all been influenced by Kant's work.

See also

• Kantian ethics
• Kant's antinomies
• Kant's theory of perception
• Kant's aesthetic theory

External links

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry
• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry