Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was a German philosopher. His Critique of Pure Reason (1781) and Critique of Judgment (1790) offer an analysis of speculative and moral reason and the faculty of human judgment. He exerted an immense influence on the intellectual movements of the 19th and 20th centuries. European philosophy is generally divided into pre-Kantian and post-Kantian schools of thought.
Born in Königsberg, East Prussia, to Lutheran parents, Kant studied theology, physics, mathematics, and philosophy at university. He lectured at the University of Königsberg for 15 years until he was eventually given a tenured position as professor of logic and metaphysics in 1770.
In his most influential work, The Critique of Pure Reason, Kant argued against Empiricism (the mind was a blank slate to be filled with observations of the physical world) and against Rationalism (it was possible to experience the world objectively without the interference of the mind.) He synthesized those two schools of philosophy—he asserted that the conscious mind must process and organize our perceptions, and made a distinction between the natural worlds as we observe it and the natural world as it is.
In The Critique of Practical Reason, Kant affirmed the existence of absolute moral law, the categorical imperative of morality dictated by actions based on rightness. Kant viewed morality as something that arises from human reason; he maintained that an action’s goodness is determined not by the outcome of the action, but by the motive behind it.
Kant also wrote several essays in support of religious liberalism and the Enlightenment.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Immanuel Kant
An action is essentially good if the motive of the agent be good, regardless of the consequences.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Goodness
The history of the human race, viewed as a whole, may be regarded as the realization of a hidden plan of nature to bring about a political constitution, internally, and for this purpose, also externally perfect, as the only state in which all the capacities implanted by her in mankind can be fully developed.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Mankind, Man
What are the aims which are at the same time duties?—they are the perfecting of ourselves, and the happiness of others.
—Immanuel Kant
Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Humankind, Humanity
In law, a man is guilty when he violates the rights of another. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Ethics
Riches ennoble a man’s circumstances, but not himself.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Riches
It is beyond a doubt that all our knowledge that begins with experience.
—Immanuel Kant
From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Honesty
The busier we are, the more acutely we feel that we live.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Busy
All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Philosophy, Philosophers
There is, therefore, only one categorical imperative. It is: Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Ethics
Give me matter, and I will construct a world out of it!
—Immanuel Kant
Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a be general natural law.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Living, Action, Doing Your Best
It is not necessary that whilst I live I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should live honorably.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Happiness
So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Principles, Action, Strength, Advice, Example
Immaturity is the incapacity to use one’s intelligence without the guidance of another.
—Immanuel Kant
Always so act that the immediate motive of thy will may become a universal rule for all intelligent beings.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Influence
Life is the faculty of spontaneous activity, the awareness that we have powers.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Action
Act so that the maxim of your act could be made the principle of a universal law.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Action
All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Thought, Thoughts, Thinking
Have patience awhile; slanders are not long-lived.—Truth is the child of time; ere long she shall appear to vindicate thee.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Slander
Thrift is care and scruple in the spending of one’s means. It is not a virtue and it requires neither skill nor talent.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Economy
Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means but always also as an end.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Action
Ours is an age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected. The sacredness of religion, and the authority of legislation, are by many regarded as grounds for exemption from the examination by this tribunal, But, if they are exempted, and cannot lay claim to sincere respect, which reason accords only to that which has stood the test of a free and public examination.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Critics, Criticism
Every man is to be respected as an absolute end in himself; and it is a crime against the dignity that belongs to him as a human being, to use him as a mere means for some external purpose.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Respect
All human knowledge thus begins with intuitions, proceeds thence to concepts, and ends with ideas.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Intuition
The death of dogma is the birth of reality.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Change
By a lie, a man…annihilates his dignity as a man.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Deception/Lying, Lying, Lies
It is not God’s will merely that we should be happy, but that we should make ourselves happy
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Happiness
Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one’s understanding without another’s guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one’s mind without another’s guidance. Sapere Aude! Dare to Know! Have the courage to use your own understanding is therefore the motto of the Enlightenment.
—Immanuel Kant
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