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
Act so that the maxim of your act could be made the principle of a universal law.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Action
Riches ennoble a man’s circumstances, but not himself.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Riches
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
Sincerity is the indispensable ground of all conscientiousness, and by consequence of all heartfelt religion.
—Immanuel Kant
Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Philosophy
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. Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Conscience, Reflection, Morals, Morality
It is beyond a doubt that all our knowledge that begins with experience.
—Immanuel Kant
Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a be general natural law.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Doing Your Best, Living, Action
The possession of power inevitably spoils the free use of reason.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Power
The death of dogma is the birth of reality.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Change
Life is the faculty of spontaneous activity, the awareness that we have powers.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Action
Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of the few: and number not voices, but weigh them.
—Immanuel Kant
So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Strength, Action, Advice, Example
An action is essentially good if the motive of the agent be good, regardless of the consequences.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Goodness
Always so act that the immediate motive of thy will may become a universal rule for all intelligent beings.
—Immanuel Kant
The greatest human quest is to know
what one must do in order to become a human being.
—Immanuel Kant
Give me matter, and I will construct a world out of it!
—Immanuel Kant
From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Honesty
All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.
—Immanuel Kant
Man must be disciplined, for he is by nature raw and wild.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Discipline
Honesty is better than any policy.
—Immanuel Kant
Topics: Honesty
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