Immanuel Kant
2 books in the library
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was a German philosopher, born in Königsberg in East Prussia, the son of a harness-maker, into a devout Pietist family. He spent his whole life in and around his home city, studying and then teaching at its university, where he worked for years as a private lecturer before being appointed professor of logic and metaphysics in 1770. He was fifty-seven when he published the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), which was followed by the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), with its categorical imperative, the Critique of Practical Reason (1788) and the Critique of Judgement (1790). His essays include “What Is Enlightenment?” (1784), with its motto “Dare to know”, and Perpetual Peace (1795). Famous for the regularity of his habits, he transformed modern philosophy, and his work on knowledge, ethics and aesthetics remains central to it.
