Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics have made him one of the most influential figures in modern Western philosophy.

In his doctrine of transcendental idealism, Kant argued that space and time are mere "forms of intuition" which structure all experience, and therefore that, while " things-in-themselves" exist and contribute to experience, they are nonetheless distinct from the objects of experience. From this it follows that the objects of experience are mere "appearances", and that the nature of things as they are in themselves is unknowable to us. In an attempt to counter the skepticism he found in the writings of philosopher David Hume, he wrote the '' Critique of Pure Reason'' (1781/1787), one of his most well-known works. In it, he developed his theory of experience to answer the question of whether synthetic '' a priori'' knowledge is possible, which would in turn make it possible to determine the limits of metaphysical inquiry. Kant drew a parallel to the Copernican revolution in his proposal to think of the objects of the senses as conforming to our spatial and temporal forms of intuition, so that we have ''a priori'' cognition of those objects.

Kant believed that reason is also the source of morality, and that aesthetics arise from a faculty of disinterested judgment. Kant's views continue to have a major influence on contemporary philosophy, especially the fields of epistemology, ethics, political theory, and post-modern aesthetics. He attempted to explain the relationship between reason and human experience and to move beyond what he believed to be the failures of traditional philosophy and metaphysics. He wanted to put an end to what he saw as an era of futile and speculative theories of human experience, while resisting the skepticism of thinkers such as Hume. He regarded himself as showing the way past the impasse between rationalists and empiricists, and is widely held to have synthesized both traditions in his thought.

Kant was an exponent of the idea that perpetual peace could be secured through universal democracy and international cooperation, and that perhaps this could be the culminating stage of world history. The nature of Kant's religious views continues to be the subject of scholarly dispute, with viewpoints ranging from the impression that he shifted from an early defense of an ontological argument for the existence of God to a principled agnosticism, to more critical treatments epitomized by Schopenhauer, who criticized the imperative form of Kantian ethics as "theological morals" and the "Mosaic Decalogue in disguise", and Nietzsche, who claimed that Kant had "theologian blood" and was merely a sophisticated apologist for traditional Christian faith. Beyond his religious views, Kant has also been criticized for the racism presented in some of his lesser-known papers, such as "On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy" and "On the Different Races of Man". Although he was a proponent of scientific racism for much of his career, Kant's views on race changed significantly in the last decade of his life, and he ultimately rejected racial hierarchies and European colonialism in '' Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch'' (1795).

Kant published other important works on ethics, religion, law, aesthetics, astronomy, and history during his lifetime. 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 was born on 22 April 1724 into a Prussian German family of Lutheran Protestant faith in Königsberg, East Prussia (since 1946 the city of Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia). His mother, Anna Regina Reuter (1697–1737), was born in Königsberg to a father from Nuremberg. Her surname is sometimes erroneously given as Porter. Kant's father, Johann Georg Kant (1682–1746), was a German harness maker from Memel, at the time Prussia's most northeastern city (now Klaipėda, Lithuania). Kant believed that his paternal grandfather Hans Kant was of Scottish origin. While scholars of Kant's life long accepted the claim, modern scholarship challenges it. It is possible that Kants got their name from the village of Kantvainiai (German: Kantwaggen – today part of Priekulė) and were of Kursenieki origin. Kant was the fourth of nine children (six of whom reached adulthood).

Baptized Emanuel, he later changed the spelling of his name to Immanuel after learning Hebrew. He was brought up in a Pietist household that stressed religious devotion, humility, and a literal interpretation of the Bible. His education was strict, punitive and disciplinary, and focused on Latin and religious instruction over mathematics and science. In his ''Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals'', he reveals a belief in immortality as the necessary condition of humanity's approach to the highest morality possible. However, as Kant was skeptical about some of the arguments used prior to him in defence of theism and maintained that human understanding is limited and can never attain knowledge about God or the soul, various commentators have labelled him a philosophical agnostic, even though it has also been suggested that Kant intends other people to think of him as a "pure rationalist", who is defined by Kant himself as someone who recognizes revelation but asserts that to know and accept it as real is not a necessary requisite to religion.

Kant apparently lived a very strict and disciplined life; it was said that neighbors would set their clocks by his daily walks. He never married, but seems to have had a rewarding social lifehe was a popular teacher, as well as a modestly successful author even before starting on his major philosophical works. He had a circle of friends with whom he frequently metamong them Joseph Green, an English merchant in Königsberg, whom reportedly he first spoke to in an argument in 1763 or before. According to the story, Kant was strolling in Dänhofschen Garten when he saw one of his acquaintances speaking to a group of men he did not know. He joined the conversation, which soon turned to unusual current events in the world. The topic of the disagreement between the English and the Americans came up. Kant took the side of the Americans, and this upset Green. He challenged Kant to a fight. Kant reportedly explained that patriotism did not get in the way of his view, and that any cosmopolitan citizen could take his position if he held Kant's political principles, which Kant explained to Green. Green was so stunned by Kant's ability to express his views, that Green offered to become friends with Kant, and invited him to his apartment that evening.

Between 1750 and 1754 Kant worked as a tutor (''Hauslehrer'') in Jučiai (German: Judtschen; now Veselovka, Russia, approximately 20 km) and in Groß-Arnsdorf (now Jarnołtowo near Morąg (German: Mohrungen), Poland, approximately 145 km).

Many myths grew up about Kant's personal mannerisms; these are listed, explained, and refuted in Goldthwait's introduction to his translation of '' Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime''.

Young scholar

Kant showed a great aptitude for study at an early age. 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. 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. Knutzen dissuaded Kant from the theory of pre-established harmony, which he regarded as "the pillow for the lazy mind". He also dissuaded Kant from idealism, the idea that reality is purely mental, which most philosophers in the 18th century regarded in a negative light. 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. He became a private tutor in the towns surrounding Königsberg, but continued his scholarly research. 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. 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. The next year, he expanded this reasoning to the formation and evolution of the Solar System in his '' Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens''. 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 1756 Kant also published three papers on the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. Kant's theory, which involved shifts in huge caverns filled with hot gases, though inaccurate, was one of the first systematic attempts to explain earthquakes in natural rather than supernatural terms. According to Walter Benjamin, Kant's slim early book on the earthquake "probably represents the beginnings of scientific geography in Germany. And certainly the beginnings of seismology".

In 1757, Kant began lecturing on geography making him one of the first lecturers to explicitly teach geography as its own subject. 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. 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. Kant also correctly deduced that the Milky Way was a large disk of stars, which he theorized formed from a much larger spinning gas cloud. He further suggested that other distant "nebulae" might be other galaxies. These postulations opened new horizons for astronomy, for the first time extending it beyond the Solar System to galactic and intergalactic realms. According to Thomas Huxley (1867), Kant also made contributions to geology in his ''Universal Natural History''.

From then on, Kant turned increasingly to philosophical issues, although he continued to write on the sciences throughout his life. 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. Two more works appeared the following year: ''Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy'' and '' The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God''. 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. The exact influence of Swedenborg on Kant, as well as the extent of Kant's belief in mysticism according to ''Dreams of a Spirit-Seer'', remain controversial. On the face of it, ''Dreams of a Spirit-Seer'' argued against the ideas of Swedenborg. Kant poked holes in the logic of Swedenborg's view of the nature of spirits, but also communicated his curiosity about Swedenborg's mysticism. 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. In defense of this appointment, Kant wrote his inaugural dissertation (''Inaugural-Dissertation'') ''De Mundi Sensibilis atque Intelligibilis Forma et Principiis'' (''On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World'').Since he had written his last habilitation thesis 14 years earlier, a new habilitation thesis was required (see S.J. McGrath, Joseph Carew (eds.), ''Rethinking German Idealism'', Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, p. 24). This work saw the emergence of several central themes of his mature work, including the distinction between the faculties of intellectual thought and sensible receptivity. To miss this distinction would mean to commit the error of subreption, and, as he says in the last chapter of the dissertation, only in avoiding this error does metaphysics flourish.

The issue that vexed Kant was central to what 20th-century scholars called "the philosophy of mind". The flowering of the natural sciences had led to an understanding of how data reaches the brain. Sunlight falling on an object is reflected from its surface in a way that maps the surface features (color, texture, etc.). The reflected light reaches the human eye, passes through the cornea, is focused by the lens onto the retina where it forms an image similar to that formed by light passing through a pinhole into a camera obscura. The retinal cells send impulses through the optic nerve and then they form a mapping in the brain of the visual features of the object. The interior mapping is not the exterior object, and our belief that there is a meaningful relationship between the object and the mapping in the brain depends on a chain of reasoning that is not fully grounded. But the uncertainty aroused by these considerations, by optical illusions, misperceptions, delusions, etc., is not the end of the problem.

Kant saw that the mind could not function as an empty container that simply receives data from outside. Something must be giving order to the incoming data. Images of external objects must be kept in the same sequence in which they were received. This ordering occurs through the mind's intuition of time. The same considerations apply to the mind's function of constituting space for ordering mappings of visual and tactile signals arriving via the already described chains of physical causation.

It is often claimed that Kant was a late developer, that he only became an important philosopher in his mid-50s after rejecting his earlier views. While it is true that Kant wrote his greatest works relatively late in life, there is a tendency to underestimate the value of his earlier works. Recent Kant scholarship has devoted more attention to these "pre-critical" writings and has recognized a degree of continuity with his mature work.

''Critique of Pure Reason''

At age 46, Kant was an established scholar and an increasingly influential philosopher, and much was expected of him. In correspondence with his ex-student and friend Markus Herz, Kant admitted that, in the inaugural dissertation, he had failed to account for the relation between our sensible and intellectual faculties. He needed to explain how we combine what is known as sensory knowledge with the other type of knowledgei.e. reasoned knowledgethese two being related but having very different processes.

Kant also credited David Hume with awakening him from a "dogmatic slumber" in which he had unquestioningly accepted the tenets of both religion and natural philosophy. Hume in his 1739 '' Treatise on Human Nature'' had argued that we only know the mind through a subjectiveessentially illusoryseries of perceptions. Ideas such as causality, morality, and objects are not evident in experience, so their reality may be questioned. Kant felt that reason could remove this skepticism, and he set himself to solving these problems. Although fond of company and conversation with others, Kant isolated himself, and resisted friends' attempts to bring him out of his isolation. When Kant emerged from his silence in 1781, the result was the ''Critique of Pure Reason''. Kant countered Hume's empiricism by claiming that some knowledge exists inherently in the mind, independent of experience. He drew a parallel to the Copernican revolution in his proposal that worldly objects can be intuited '' a priori'' ('beforehand'), and that intuition is consequently distinct from objective reality. He acquiesced to Hume somewhat by defining causality as a "regular, constant sequence of events in time, and nothing more."

Although now uniformly recognized as one of the greatest works in the history of philosophy, this ''Critique'' disappointed Kant's readers upon its initial publication. The book was long, over 800 pages in the original German edition, and written in a convoluted style. It received few reviews, and these granted it no significance. Kant's former student, Johann Gottfried Herder criticized it for placing reason as an entity worthy of criticism instead of considering the process of reasoning within the context of language and one's entire personality. Similar to Christian Garve and Johann Georg Heinrich Feder, he rejected Kant's position that space and time possessed a form that could be analyzed. Additionally, Garve and Feder also faulted Kant's Critique for not explaining differences in perception of sensations. Its density made it, as Herder said in a letter to Johann Georg Hamann, a "tough nut to crack", obscured by "all this heavy gossamer". Its reception stood in stark contrast to the praise Kant had received for earlier works, such as his ''Prize Essay'' and shorter works that preceded the first Critique. These well-received and readable tracts include one on the earthquake in Lisbon that was so popular that it was sold by the page. Prior to the change in course documented in the first Critique, his books had sold well.Gulyga, Arsenij. ''Immanuel Kant: His Life and Thought.'' Trans., Marijan Despaltović. Boston: Birkhäuser, 1987, p. 62. Kant was disappointed with the first Critique's reception. 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. Shortly thereafter, Kant's friend Johann Friedrich Schultz (1739–1805) (professor of mathematics) published ''Erläuterungen über des Herrn Professor Kant Critik