Immanuel Kant

(April 22, 1724 - February 12, 1804)

Personal Background
Immanuel Kant was born on April 22, 1724, in Konigsberg, Prussia, or what
is now Kaliningrad, Russia. He was the fourth of nine children born to Anna Regina
Reuter and Johann Georg Kant. The family belonged to a Protestant religious group of Pietists (a German
religious movement whose members strongly believed in religious experience and biblical study), and a
concern for religion touched every aspect of their lives. Although Kant became critical of formal religion,
he continued to admire the "praiseworthy conduct" of Pietists. Kant's elementary education was at Saint
George's Hospital School and then at the Collegium Fredericianum, a Pietist school, where he remained
from 1732 until 1740. Here he gained a deep appreciation for the classics of Latin literature, especially
the poet Lucretius. In 1740 Kant entered the University of Königsberg. He became interested in
philosophy, mathematics, and the natural sciences. The death of Kant's father in 1746 left him without
income. He became a private tutor for seven years in order to have enough time and money to continue
his education. During this period Kant published several papers dealing with scientific questions. The
most important was the "General Natural History and Theory of the Heavens" in 1755. In this work Kant
concluded the origin of the solar system was a result of the gravitational (having to do with the force
exerted between bodies of matter) connection of atoms (the smallest pieces of matter). In the same year
Kant presented a Latin treatise, "On Fire," to qualify for the doctoral degree. Kant spent the next fifteen
years (1755–1770) as a lecturer. In order to live he lectured between twenty-six and twenty-eight hours a
week. Despite this enormous teaching burden, Kant continued to publish papers on various topics. He
finally achieved a professorship at Königsberg in 1770.

His Philosophy
Critique of Pure Reason (1781) published by Immanuel Kant at the age of 57. This enormous work is one
of the most important and difficult books in Western thought. The aim of the critique is to explain how
experience and reason interact in thought and understanding. The Critique of Pure Reason is a methodology (a
collection of methods and rules) of how "understanding and reason [the power of understanding] can know
apart from experience." This revolutionary proposal means that the mind organizes our experiences into the
way the world appears and the way that we think about the world. Any experience is placed into one of these
categories so that it can be understood. Kant also wrote that the mind can have knowledge of things that have
or have not been experienced, but these are only possibilities. Kant does not say that the mind creates
objects—only the conditions under which objects are noticed and understood. We can never know noumenal
reality (theoretical objects or ideas that are understood by thought alone) with any certainty. Kant suggests that
the theories of God, freedom, and immorality (something that goes against ideas or right and wrong) are not
proved or disproved through the use of reason, nor can the use of scientific methods prove or disprove their
existence. The idea of them is beyond the realm of human experience. Kant expressed that faith in God,
freedom, and immorality are rational beliefs because their existence makes an orderly and moral world a
possibility.

“Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves
worthy of happiness.” – Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant