Kant

Life

Immanuel Kant spent nearly his entire life in Königsberg, teaching and writing with remarkable regularity. His mature work attempted to explain the powers and limits of reason, while grounding morality in freedom, duty, and human autonomy.

The question

“What must the mind contribute for experience to be possible?”

Argued against

Naive empiricism, unchecked metaphysics, and morality based only on consequences or feelings.

Why Kant matters

Kant changes the center of philosophy by asking not just what we know, but how knowing is possible.

Where to start

Perpetual Peace The most readable first step into Kant before the harder moral and critical works.

Works

• Perpetual Peace Essay · Intermediate Kant's most approachable political essay on republican government, international law, and peace.
• Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals Treatise · Brutal Kant's clearest entry into duty, autonomy, and moral law.
• Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics Treatise · Advanced Kant's shorter doorway into the problem behind the Critique of Pure Reason.
• Critique of Practical Reason Treatise · Brutal Kant turns from what reason can know to what reason can command.
• Critique of Judgment Treatise · Brutal Kant's bridge between nature, freedom, beauty, the sublime, and living form.

Quests with Kant

• Minds in Doubt A confrontation with certainty, duty, and the values modern life inherited. Modern Philosophy Quest