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
Riches ennoble a man’s circumstances, but not himself.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Riches
He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Animals
What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Hope
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, Thinking, Thoughts
Sincerity is the indispensable ground of all conscientiousness, and by consequence of all heartfelt religion.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Sincerity
From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Honesty
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
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
Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Experience
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
It is not God’s will merely that we should be happy, but that we should make ourselves happy
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Happiness
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: Criticism, Critics
The busier we are, the more acutely we feel that we live.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Busy
Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Happiness
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
Fallacious and misleading arguments are most easily detected if set out in correct syllogistic form
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Arguments
All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.
—Immanuel Kant
Morality is not really the doctrine of how to make ourselves happy but of how we are to be worthy of happiness
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Morality
Act so that the maxim of your act could be made the principle of a universal law.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Action
Confidence in the principles of an enemy must remain even during war, otherwise a peace could never be concluded; and hostilities would degenerate into a war of extermination since war in fact is but the sad resource employed in a state of nature in defence of rights; force standing there in lieu of juridical tribunals. Neither of the two parties can be accused of injustice, since for that purpose a juridical decision would be necessary. But here the event of a battle (as formerly the judgments of God) determines the justice of either party; since between states there cannot be a war of punishment no subordination existing between them. A war, therefore, which might cause the destruction of both parties at once, together with the annihilation of every right, would permit the conclusion of a perpetual peace only upon the vast burial-ground of the human species.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: War
By a lie, a man…annihilates his dignity as a man.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Deception/Lying, Lies, Lying
There is a limit where the intellect fails and breaks down, and this limit is where the questions concerning God, and freewill, and immortality arise.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Faith
Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing can ever be made.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Humanity
Suicide is not abominable because God prohibits it; God prohibits it because it is abominable.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Suicide
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
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
Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Humankind, Humanity
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
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
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