128 Facts About Kant

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers.

Kant drew a parallel to the Copernican revolution in his proposal to think of the objects of the senses as conforming to our spatial and temporal forms of intuition, so that we have a priori cognition of those objects.

Kant believed that reason is the source of morality, and that aesthetics arise from a faculty of disinterested judgment.

Kant's views continue to have a major influence on contemporary philosophy, especially the fields of epistemology, ethics, political theory, and post-modern aesthetics.

Kant attempted to explain the relationship between reason and human experience and to move beyond what he believed to be the failures of traditional philosophy and metaphysics.

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Kant wanted to put an end to what he saw as an era of futile and speculative theories of human experience, while resisting the skepticism of thinkers such as Hume.

Kant regarded himself as showing the way past the impasse between rationalists and empiricists, and is widely held to have synthesized both traditions in his thought.

Kant was an exponent of the idea that perpetual peace could be secured through universal democracy and international cooperation, and that perhaps this could be the culminating stage of world history.

Beyond his religious views, Kant has been criticized for the racism presented in some of his lesser-known papers, such as "On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy" and "On the Different Races of Man".

Kant published other important works on ethics, religion, law, aesthetics, astronomy, and history during his lifetime.

Kant's mother, Anna Regina Reuter, was born in Konigsberg to a father from Nuremberg.

Kant's father, Johann Georg Kant, was a German harness maker from Memel, at the time Prussia's most northeastern city .

Kant believed that his paternal grandfather Hans Kant was of Scottish origin.

Kant was brought up in a Pietist household that stressed religious devotion, humility, and a literal interpretation of the Bible.

Kant's education was strict, punitive and disciplinary, and focused on Latin and religious instruction over mathematics and science.

Kant apparently lived a very strict and disciplined life; it was said that neighbors would set their clocks by his daily walks.

Kant never married, but seems to have had a rewarding social life—he was a popular teacher, as well as a modestly successful author even before starting on his major philosophical works.

Kant had a circle of friends with whom he frequently met—among them Joseph Green, an English merchant in Konigsberg, whom reportedly he first spoke to in an argument in 1763 or before.

Kant joined the conversation, which soon turned to unusual current events in the world.

Kant took the side of the Americans, and this upset Green, and he challenged Kant to a fight.

Kant typically referred to indigenous peoples of America as "Americans", as well.

Kant first attended the Collegium Fridericianum from which he graduated at the end of the summer of 1740.

Kant studied the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz and Christian Wolff under Martin Knutzen, a rationalist who was familiar with developments in British philosophy and science and introduced Kant to the new mathematical physics of Isaac Newton.

Kant dissuaded Kant from idealism, the idea that reality is purely mental, which most philosophers in the 18th century regarded in a negative light.

The theory of transcendental idealism that Kant later included in the Critique of Pure Reason was developed partially in opposition to traditional idealism.

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Kant became a private tutor in the towns surrounding Konigsberg, but continued his scholarly research.

Kant is best known for his work in the philosophy of ethics and metaphysics, but he made significant contributions to other disciplines.

In 1755, Kant received a license to lecture in the University of Konigsberg and began lecturing on a variety of topics including mathematics, physics, logic and metaphysics.

In 1756 Kant published three papers on the 1755 Lisbon earthquake.

In 1757, Kant began lecturing on geography making him one of the first lecturers to explicitly teach geography as its own subject.

Kant correctly deduced that the Milky Way was a large disk of stars, which he theorized formed from a much larger spinning gas cloud.

Kant further suggested that other distant "nebulae" might be other galaxies.

In 1766 Kant wrote Dreams of a Spirit-Seer which dealt with the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.

In defense of this appointment, Kant wrote his inaugural dissertation De Mundi Sensibilis atque Intelligibilis Forma et Principiis .

Issue that vexed Kant was central to what 20th-century scholars called "the philosophy of mind".

Kant saw that the mind could not function as an empty container that simply receives data from outside.

Recent Kant scholarship has devoted more attention to these "pre-critical" writings and has recognized a degree of continuity with his mature work.

At age 46, Kant was an established scholar and an increasingly influential philosopher, and much was expected of him.

In correspondence with his ex-student and friend Markus Herz, Kant admitted that, in the inaugural dissertation, he had failed to account for the relation between our sensible and intellectual faculties.

Kant needed to explain how we combine what is known as sensory knowledge with the other type of knowledge—i.

Kant credited David Hume with awakening him from a "dogmatic slumber" in which he had unquestioningly accepted the tenets of both religion and natural philosophy.

Kant felt that reason could remove this skepticism, and he set himself to solving these problems.

When Kant emerged from his silence in 1781, the result was the Critique of Pure Reason.

Kant countered Hume's empiricism by claiming that some knowledge exists inherently in the mind, independent of experience.

Kant drew a parallel to the Copernican revolution in his proposal that worldly objects can be intuited a priori, and that intuition is consequently distinct from objective reality.

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Kant published a second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1787, heavily revising the first parts of the book.

Kant continued to develop his moral philosophy, notably in 1788's Critique of Practical Reason and 1797's Metaphysics of Morals.

Kant then arranged to have all four pieces published as a book, routing it through the philosophy department at the University of Jena to avoid the need for theological censorship.

Kant then published his response to the King's reprimand and explained himself, in the preface of The Conflict of the Faculties.

Kant wrote a number of semi-popular essays on history, religion, politics and other topics.

Kant opposed these developments and publicly denounced Fichte in an open letter in 1799.

In 1800, a student of Kant named Gottlob Benjamin Jasche published a manual of logic for teachers called Logik, which he had prepared at Kant's request.

Kant always cut a curious figure in his lifetime for his modest, rigorously scheduled habits, which have been referred to as clocklike.

Originally, Kant was buried inside the cathedral, but in 1880 his remains were moved to a neo-Gothic chapel adjoining the northeast corner of the cathedral.

The incident was apparently connected with a recent vote to rename Khrabrovo Airport, where Kant was in the lead for a while, prompting Russian nationalist resentment.

Kant maintained that one ought to think autonomously, free of the dictates of external authority.

Kant's work reconciled many of the differences between the rationalist and empiricist traditions of the 18th century.

Kant had a decisive impact on the Romantic and German Idealist philosophies of the 19th century.

Kant's work has been a starting point for many 20th century philosophers.

Kant asserted that, because of the limitations of argumentation in the absence of irrefutable evidence, no one could really know whether there is a God and an afterlife or not.

Kant drew a parallel between the Copernican revolution and the epistemology of his new transcendental philosophy, involving two interconnected foundations of his "critical philosophy":.

Kant argued that the rational order of the world as known by science was not just the accidental accumulation of sense perceptions.

However, Kant speaks of the thing in itself or transcendental object as a product of the understanding as it attempts to conceive of objects in abstraction from the conditions of sensibility.

The specifics of Kant's account generated immediate and lasting controversy.

Kant defines his theory of perception in his very influential 1781 work the Critique of Pure Reason, which has often been cited as the most significant volume of metaphysics and epistemology in modern philosophy.

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Kant maintains that understanding of the external world had its foundations not merely in experience, but in both experience and a priori concepts, thus offering a non-empiricist critique of rationalist philosophy, which is what has been referred to as his Copernican revolution.

Kant asserts that experience is based on the perception of external objects and a priori knowledge.

Against metaphysical time and space Kant explains they are not things in themselves but mere shape of the way we feel things.

Kant adds that space itself depends on time, because nothing can be in space without being within time.

Kant deemed it obvious that we have some objective knowledge of the world, such as, say, Newtonian physics.

The parallelism with Kant's categories is obvious: quantity, quality, relation and modality .

Kant ran into a problem with his theory that the mind plays a part in producing objective knowledge.

Kant developed his ethics, or moral philosophy, in three works: Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Critique of Practical Reason, and Metaphysics of Morals .

In Groundwork, Kant tries to convert our everyday, obvious, rational knowledge of morality into philosophical knowledge.

Kant is known for his theory that there is a single moral obligation, which he called the "Categorical Imperative", and is derived from the concept of duty.

Kant defines the demands of moral law as "categorical imperatives".

Kant stated that the moral means and ends can be applied to the categorical imperative, that rational beings can pursue certain "ends" using the appropriate "means".

Kant believed that the moral law is a principle of reason itself, and is not based on contingent facts about the world, such as what would make us happy, but to act on the moral law which has no other motive than "worthiness to be happy".

Unlike a hypothetical imperative, a categorical imperative is an unconditional obligation; it has the force of an obligation regardless of our will or desires In Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals Kant enumerated three formulations of the categorical imperative that he believed to be roughly equivalent.

Kant believed that, if an action is not done with the motive of duty, then it is without moral value.

Kant thought that every action should have pure intention behind it; otherwise, it is meaningless.

In Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Kant posited the "counter-utilitarian idea that there is a difference between preferences and values, and that considerations of individual rights temper calculations of aggregate utility", a concept that is an axiom in economics:.

Phrase quoted by Kant, which is used to summarize the counter-utilitarian nature of his moral philosophy, is Fiat justitia, pereat mundus, which he translates loosely as "Let justice reign even if all the rascals in the world should perish from it".

An agent's maxim, according to Kant, is his "subjective principle of human actions": that is, what the agent believes is his reason to act.

Commentators, starting in the 20th century, have tended to see Kant as having a strained relationship with religion, though this was not the prevalent view in the 19th century.

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Kant articulates his strongest criticisms of the organization and practices of religious organizations to those that encourage what he sees as a religion of counterfeit service to God.

Kant sees these as efforts to make oneself pleasing to God in ways other than conscientious adherence to the principle of moral rightness in choosing and acting upon one's maxims.

Nevertheless, other interpreters consider that Kant was trying to mark off defensible from indefensible Christian belief.

Kant sees in Jesus Christ the affirmation of a "pure moral disposition of the heart" that "can make man well-pleasing to God".

However, many interpreters, including Allen W Wood and Lawrence Pasternack, now agree with Stephen Palmquist's claim that a better way of reading Kant's Religion is to see him as raising morality to the status of religion.

Kant calls practical "everything that is possible through freedom", and the pure practical laws that are never given through sensuous conditions but are held analogously with the universal law of causality are moral laws.

Kant discusses the subjective nature of aesthetic qualities and experiences in Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime .

Baumgarten, who wrote Aesthetica, Kant was one of the first philosophers to develop and integrate aesthetic theory into a unified and comprehensive philosophical system, utilizing ideas that played an integral role throughout his philosophy.

Kant believed that a judgement of taste shares characteristics engaged in a moral judgement: both are disinterested, and we hold them to be universal.

Kant developed a theory of humor that has been interpreted as an "incongruity" theory.

Kant illustrated his theory of humor by telling three narrative jokes in the Critique of Judgment.

Kant thought that the physiological impact of humor is akin to that of music.

Kant developed a distinction between an object of art as a material value subject to the conventions of society and the transcendental condition of the judgment of taste as a "refined" value in his Idea of A Universal History .

In Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, Kant listed several conditions that he thought necessary for ending wars and creating a lasting peace.

Kant believed that universal history leads to the ultimate world of republican states at peace, but his theory was not pragmatic.

Kant's political thought can be summarized as republican government and international organization.

Kant opposed "democracy, " which at his time meant direct democracy, believing that majority rule posed a threat to individual liberty.

Kant lectured on anthropology, the study of human nature, for twenty-three and a half years.

Introduction to Kant's Anthropology was translated into English and published by the Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy series in 2006.

Kant was among the first people of his time to introduce anthropology as an intellectual area of study, long before the field gained popularity, and his texts are considered to have advanced the field.

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Kant was the first to suggest using a dimensionality approach to human diversity.

Kant analyzed the nature of the Hippocrates-Galen four temperaments and plotted them in two dimensions: "activation", or energetic aspect of behaviour, and "orientation on emotionality".

Kant was one of the most notable Enlightenment thinkers to defend racism, and some have claimed that he was one of the central figures in the birth of modern scientific racism.

Kant goes on that Hindustanis can never reach the level of abstract concepts and that a "great hindustani man" is one who has "gone far in the art of deception and has much money".

Kant stated that the Hindus always stay the way they are and can never advance.

About black Africans, Kant wrote that "they can be educated but only as servants, that is they allow themselves to be trained".

Kant calls them unmotivated, lacking affect, passion and love, describing them as too weak for labor, unfit for any culture, and too phlegmatic for diligence.

Kant said the Native Americans are "far below the Negro, who undoubtedly holds the lowest of all remaining levels by which we designate the different races".

Kant stated that "instead of assimilation, which was intended by the melting together of the various races, Nature has here made a law of just the opposite".

Kant believed that in the future all races would be extinguished, except that of the whites.

Charles W Mills wrote that Kant has been "sanitized for public consumption", his racist works conveniently ignored.

Pauline Kleingeld argues that while Kant was indeed a staunch advocate of scientific racism for much of his career, his views on race changed significantly in works published in the last decade of his life.

In particular, she argues that Kant unambiguously rejected past views related to racial hierarchies and the diminished rights or moral status of non-whites in Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch .

Kant's ideas have been incorporated into a variety of schools of thought.

Influential English Romantic poet and aesthetic philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge was greatly influenced by Kant and helped to spread awareness of him, and of German idealism generally, in the UK and the USA.

Kant's thinking on religion was used in Britain to challenge the decline in religious faith in the nineteenth century.

Criticisms of Kant were common in the realist views of the new positivism at that time.

Kant's motto was "Back to Kant", and a re-examination of his ideas began .

Kant went so far as to classify his own philosophy as a "critical history of modernity, rooted in Kant".

Kant believed that mathematical truths were forms of synthetic a priori knowledge, which means they are necessary and universal, yet known through intuition.

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Mou Zongsan's study of Kant has been cited as a highly crucial part in the development of Mou's personal philosophy, namely New Confucianism.

Kant's influence has extended to the social, behavioral, and physical sciences, as in the sociology of Max Weber, the psychology of Jean Piaget and Carl Gustav Jung, and the linguistics of Noam Chomsky.

Kant held the view that "[I]f one does not want to assert that relativity theory goes against reason, one cannot retain the a priori concepts and norms of Kant's system".