Immanuel Kant (, ; ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers.
Kant was the fourth of nine children (four of whom reached adulthood). Kant was born on 22 April 1724 into a Prussian German family of Lutheran Protestant faith in Königsberg, East Prussia.
He studied the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz and Christian Wolff under Martin Knutzen (Associate Professor of Logic and Metaphysics from 1734 until his death in 1751), a rationalist who was also familiar with developments in British philosophy and science and introduced Kant to the new mathematical physics of Isaac Newton.
Hume in his 1739 Treatise on Human Nature had argued that we only know the mind through a subjectiveessentially illusoryseries of perceptions.
He first attended the Collegium Fridericianum from which he graduated at the end of the summer of 1740.
In 1740, aged 16, he enrolled at the University of Königsberg, where he spent his whole career.
In 1749, he published his first philosophical work, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (written in 1745–47). ===Early work=== Kant is best known for his work in the philosophy of ethics and metaphysics, but he made significant contributions to other disciplines.
The theory of transcendental idealism that Kant later included in the Critique of Pure Reason was developed partially in opposition to traditional idealism. His father's stroke and subsequent death in 1746 interrupted his studies.
Kant left Königsberg shortly after August 1748—he would return there in August 1754.
In 1749, he published his first philosophical work, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (written in 1745–47). ===Early work=== Kant is best known for his work in the philosophy of ethics and metaphysics, but he made significant contributions to other disciplines.
He studied the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz and Christian Wolff under Martin Knutzen (Associate Professor of Logic and Metaphysics from 1734 until his death in 1751), a rationalist who was also familiar with developments in British philosophy and science and introduced Kant to the new mathematical physics of Isaac Newton.
Kant left Königsberg shortly after August 1748—he would return there in August 1754.
In 1754, while contemplating on a prize question by the Berlin Academy about the problem of Earth's rotation, he argued that the Moon's gravity would slow down Earth's spin and he also put forth the argument that gravity would eventually cause the Moon's tidal locking to coincide with the Earth's rotation.
In 1755, Kant received a license to lecture in the University of Königsberg and began lecturing on a variety of topics including mathematics, physics, logic and metaphysics.
In his 1756 essay on the theory of winds, Kant laid out an original insight into the coriolis force.
In 1757, Kant began lecturing on geography being one of the first people to explicitly teach geography as its own subject.
In the early 1760s, Kant produced a series of important works in philosophy.
The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures, a work in logic, was published in 1762.
By 1764, Kant had become a notable popular author, and wrote Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime; he was second to Moses Mendelssohn in a Berlin Academy prize competition with his Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (often referred to as "The Prize Essay").
In 1766 Kant wrote Dreams of a Spirit-Seer which dealt with the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.
After Kant became a professor in 1770, he expanded the topics of his lectures to include lectures on natural law, ethics and anthropology along with other topics. In the Universal Natural History, Kant laid out the Nebular hypothesis, in which he deduced that the Solar System had formed from a large cloud of gas, a nebula.
On 31 March 1770, aged 45, Kant was finally appointed Full Professor of Logic and Metaphysics (Professor Ordinarius der Logic und Metaphysic) at the University of Königsberg.
When Kant emerged from his silence in 1781, the result was the Critique of Pure Reason.
Recognizing the need to clarify the original treatise, Kant wrote the Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics in 1783 as a summary of its main views.
In 1786, Karl Leonhard Reinhold published a series of public letters on Kantian philosophy.
Reinhold's letters were widely read and made Kant the most famous philosopher of his era. ===Later work=== Kant published a second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1787, heavily revising the first parts of the book.
He continued to develop his moral philosophy, notably in 1788's Critique of Practical Reason (known as the second Critique) and 1797's Metaphysics of Morals.
The 1790 Critique of Judgment (the third Critique) applied the Kantian system to aesthetics and teleology. In 1792, Kant's attempt to publish the Second of the four Pieces of Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, in the journal Berlinische Monatsschrift, met with opposition from the King's censorship commission, which had been established that same year in the context of the French Revolution.
The 1790 Critique of Judgment (the third Critique) applied the Kantian system to aesthetics and teleology. In 1792, Kant's attempt to publish the Second of the four Pieces of Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, in the journal Berlinische Monatsschrift, met with opposition from the King's censorship commission, which had been established that same year in the context of the French Revolution.
When he nevertheless published a second edition in 1794, the censor was so irate that he arranged for a royal order that required Kant never to publish or even speak publicly about religion.
He continued to develop his moral philosophy, notably in 1788's Critique of Practical Reason (known as the second Critique) and 1797's Metaphysics of Morals.
Kant opposed these developments and publicly denounced Fichte in an open letter in 1799.
In 1800, a student of Kant named Gottlob Benjamin Jäsche (1762–1842) published a manual of logic for teachers called Logik, which he had prepared at Kant's request.
Geography was one of Kant's most popular lecturing topics and in 1802 a compilation by Friedrich Theodor Rink of Kant's lecturing notes, Physical Geography, was released.
Immanuel Kant (, ; ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers.
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 mausoleum was constructed by the architect Friedrich Lahrs and was finished in 1924 in time for the bicentenary of Kant's birth.
These include the Universal Natural History (1755), the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), the Critique of Judgment (1790), Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason (1793), and the Metaphysics of Morals (1797). ==Biography== Kant's mother, Anna Regina Reuter (1697–1737), was born in Königsberg (since 1946 the city of Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia) to a father from Nuremberg.
A replica of the statue of Kant that stood in German times in front of the main University of Königsberg building was donated by a German entity in the early 1990s and placed in the same grounds. After the expulsion of Königsberg's German population at the end of World War II, the University of Königsberg where Kant taught was replaced by the Russian-language Kaliningrad State University, which appropriated the campus and surviving buildings.
In 2005, the university was renamed Immanuel Kant State University of Russia.
The name change was announced at a ceremony attended by President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany, and the university formed a Kant Society, dedicated to the study of Kantianism. In late November 2018, his tomb and statue were vandalized with paint by unknown assailants, who also scattered leaflets glorifying Rus' and denouncing Kant as a "traitor".
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