Immanuel Kant Biography and List of Works

German philosopher, professor of logic and metaphysics, whose masterpiece, The Critique of Pure Reason, appeared in 1781 and then in a substantially revised edition in 1787. Kant's aim in that work was to make philosophy, for the first time, truly scientific. In the person of Kant, German philosophy became estranged from the cultured lay public of the period, above all because of its jargon, simply impossible for the uninitiated to understand. Kant's most famous contribution to moral philosophy is the principle "act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should to become a universal law."

Kant was born in Königsberg (Kaliningrad), then part of eastern Prussia. His father was a poor but respected saddler, whose strict pietistic Protestantism made a lasting impression upon Kant. He attended the Collegium Fridericianum, and at the age of 16 entered the University of Köningsberg. He studied philosophy, mathematics, and physics, and attended lectures in theology.

When his father died, Kant's financial situation became difficult. He served nine years as a private tutor with various families. In 1755 Kant received his doctor's degree and was appointed a lecturer at the university. He taught logic, metaphysics, moral philosophy, natural theology, anthropology, as well as mathematics, physics, and physical geography.

In 1770 Kant was appointed professor of logic and metaphysics. He was a dean of the faculties six times and rector of the university twice before retiring in 1796. He died on February 12, 1804.

Kant never left his home town. His habits were so regular, that people used to set their clocks as the philosopher passed their houses on his daily walk - the only time when the schedule changed was when Kant read Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile, and forgot the walk.

"Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me."
(from Critique of Practical Reason, 1799)

Kant's output was large but he produced his most important works, the three Critiques, late in life. His attempts to provide an objective basis for aesthetic judgments have influenced later art criticism. In Critique of Judgment he argued that aesthetic judgments do not depend on any property - such as beauty - of the object.

In The Critique of Pure Reason Kant attempted to prove, that although our knowledge is derived from experience, it is possible to have knowledge of objects in advance of experience. The key question is how are synthetic a priori judgments possible? - Such propositions as 'All bodies are extended in space' or 'All husbands are male' are analytical, because the ideas of extension and maleness are already contained in those of body and husband. On the other hand, 'Some bodies are heavy' or 'A green light indicates, "Go"' are synthetic, since the ideas of heaviness and "Go" are not necessarily contained in the subject ideas.

An a priori knowledge is knowledge, which is independent of all experience. A priori proposition is one that can be known to be true, or false, without reference to experience, except so far as experience is necessary for understanding its terms. An a posteriori knowledge is derived from experience. A posteriori preposition can be known to be true, or false, only by reference to how, as a matter of contingent fact, things have been, are, or will be. 'Every change has a cause', expresses a judgement, which is strictly necessary and universal. 'All bodies are heavy' is simply a generalization to which no exception has been observed.

Kant saw that there are two sources of human knowledge: sensibility and understanding. He suggested, that the way in which we perceive, identify, and reflect upon objects might have itself a form or structure, which in some ways moulds or contributes to our experience.

According to Kant, all that our senses and understanding contribute to knowledge is preconditioned by the 'forms of our sensibility' (space and time) and by the 'categories of our understanding' that are not learned from experience, but enable us to make sense of our experience. Among them are space, time, quantity, quality, relation, modality, and their sub forms. These concepts are essential if any creature is going to be able to make judgments about his experience. The twelve categories form a sort of minimum conceptual apparatus for making sense of the world.

Thus Kant's conclusion was, that cognition is restricted to the realm of phenomena. We can know nothing, which cannot be given, through our senses. Within these limitations we may have valid empirical knowledge, and cognition a priori of the universal conditions which make nature itself and a science of nature possible.

"Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness."
(from Crtitique of Practical Reason)

Especially Kant's philosophy of religion arose strong reaction, but the younger generation saw Kant as their intellectual leader. Jena soon became the centre on Kantian idealism, with such representatives as Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

For further reading: The Categorical Imperative by H.J. Paton (1947); Kantian Ethics by A.E. Teale (1951); Kant's Theory of Knowledge by G. Bird (1962); The Bounds of Sense by P.F. Strawson (1966); Kant's Analytic by J. Bennett (1966); by P.M.S. Hacker (1972); Kant's Dialectic by J. Bennett (1974); Kant by R. Walker (1979); Kant's Theory of Mind by K. Ameriks (1982): Kant's Transcendental Idealaism by H. Allison (1983); The Coherence of Kant's Doctrine of Freedom by Bernard Carnois (1987); A Commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason by Norman Kemp Smith (1991); The Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. by Paul Guyer (1992); The Genesis of Kant's Citique of Judgment by John H. Zammito (1992); Essays on Kant's Political Philosophy by Howard Lloyd Williams (1992); Cognition and Eros by Robin May Schott (1993); The Embodiment of Reason by Susan Meld Shell (1996); A Commentary of Kant's Critique of Practical Reason by Lewis White Beck (1996); Feminist Interpretations of Immanuel Kant, ed. by Robin May Schott (1997); Agent-Centered Morality: An Aristotelian Alternative to Kantian Internalism by George W. Harris (1999); The Categorical Imperative by Herbert J. Paton (1999) - See also: Arthur Schopenhauer, Emanuel Swedenborg, Dashiell Hammett

THOUGHTS CONCERNING A TRUE ESTIMATION OF THE VITAL FORCES, (1749)
GROUNDIN FOR THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS, (1993)