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Immanuel Kant: A Summary

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher of the Enlightenment era who is known for his extensive works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics.
He believed that space and time are forms of intuition that structure all experience, and that objects are mere appearances. The nature of things as they are in themselves is unknowable to us.
Kant's most well-known work is the Critique of Pure Reason, which he wrote to counter the philosophical doctrine of skepticism. He proposed that objects of experience conform to our spatial and temporal forms of intuition and categories of understanding.
Kant believed that reason is the source of morality and that aesthetics arises from a faculty of disinterested judgment. His religious views were connected to his moral theory.
Kant hoped that perpetual peace could be achieved through universal democracy and international cooperation, but his promotion of scientific racism for much of his career calls into question his cosmopolitan reputation.
Kant was born in Königsberg, East Prussia in 1724, and was raised in a pietist household that stressed religious devotion and a literal interpretation of the Bible.
He attended the University of Königsberg and studied the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz and Christian Wolff under Martin Knutzen, a rationalist who introduced Kant to the new mathematical physics of Isaac Newton.
Kant became a private tutor after his father's death in 1746, but continued his scholarly research. In 1749, he published his first philosophical work, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces.
Kant made significant contributions to other disciplines, including geography and astronomy, where he laid out the Nebular hypothesis, which deduced that the Solar System had formed from a large cloud of gas.
Kant's reputation rose through the latter portion of the 1780s, sparked by a series of important works, including the 1784 essay, "Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?" and 1785's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.
He published a second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1787, heavily revising the first parts of the book. Most of his subsequent work focused on other areas of philosophy, including moral philosophy and aesthetics.
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 in 1792.
Kant's legacy as one of the most influential figures in modern Western philosophy endures to this day.Immanuel Kant: Life, Death, Philosophy, and Interpretive Disagreements

Life and Death:

Kant was born in 1724 in Königsberg, Prussia and died in 1804.
He was a philosopher who wrote on a wide range of topics, including religion, politics, and history.
He was reprimanded by the King for speaking publicly about religion, which he responded to in the preface of The Conflict of the Faculties.
He opposed the development of German idealism and publicly denounced Fichte in an open letter in 1799.
His health worsened over time, and he died in 1804, with his unfinished final work published as Opus Postumum.
His skull was found to be larger than the average German male's with a "high and broad" forehead.
Kant's mausoleum adjoins the northeast corner of Königsberg Cathedral in Kaliningrad, Russia.
Today, many newlyweds bring flowers to the mausoleum, and artifacts previously owned by Kant were destroyed during World War II.

Philosophy:

Kant was impressed with the scientific advances made by Newton and others but recognized that it called into question the traditional authority of politics and religion.
His critical project aimed to secure human autonomy, the basis of religion and morality, from the threat of mechanism while preserving the advances of modern science.
The Critique of Pure Reason focuses on the question of how synthetic judgments a priori are possible and argues that we can think of ourselves as free.
The Critique of the Power of Judgment argues that we may rationally hope for the harmonious unity of the theoretical and practical domains.
These works place the active, rational human subject at the center of the cognitive and moral worlds.
Kant argues that the mind itself necessarily makes a constitutive contribution to knowledge, that this contribution is transcendental, and that to act autonomously is to act according to rational moral principles.

Interpretive Disagreements:

The "two-world" interpretation regards Kant's position as a statement of epistemological limitation, while the "two-aspect" view argues that the thing in itself does not represent a separate ontological domain.
Kant's "Transcendental Analytic" is concerned with the contributions of the understanding, and the "Transcendental Dialectic" is concerned with the faculty of reason as the source of both metaphysical errors and genuine regulatory principles.
The "Analytic of Concepts" establishes the universality and necessity of the pure concepts of the understanding, and the "Analytic of Principles" is concerned with the application of those pure concepts in empirical judgments.
The "Transcendental Deduction" is Kant's famous argument for the universality and necessity of the categories of the understanding.Summary of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
Kant argues for the universal and necessary validity of the pure concepts of the understanding, or the categories, which define what it is to be a thing in general.
He provides two central lines of argumentation in support of his claims about the categories: the "metaphysical deduction" and the "Transcendental Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding".
The "Transcendental Deduction" argues that these pure concepts apply universally and necessarily to the objects that are given in experience, based on the premise of the "transcendental unity of apperception".
Kant's principle of apperception is that "The I think must be able to accompany all my representations", which is an a priori conceptual truth that cannot be based on experience.
The "Analytic of Principles" shows how the categories must universally apply to objects given in actual experience and how they do so.
The "Transcendental Dialectic" contains the "negative" portion of Kant's Critique, which exposes the limits of metaphysical speculation and demonstrates as spurious the efforts of reason to arrive at knowledge independent of sensibility.
Kant's theory of morality is grounded in the "categorical imperative", which is derived from the concept of duty and obliges one to treat humanity as an end in itself rather than as means to other ends.
Kant distinguishes between the transcendental idea of freedom and the practical concept of freedom as the independence of our will from the "coercion" or "necessitation through sensuous impulses".
Kant provides three formulations for the categorical imperative, which are necessarily equivalent expressions of the pure universality of the moral law as such.
Maxims fail to qualify as practical laws if they produce a contradiction in conception or a contradiction in the will when universalized.Summary Title: The Philosophies of Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant's philosophy is based on the idea that morality should be based on reason and not on emotions or desires.
Kant's "Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals" is concerned with establishing a supreme principle of morality.
"The Doctrine of Virtue" is the second part of Kant's "Metaphysics of Morals" and deals with ethics.
Kant believed that universal history leads to the ultimate world of republican states at peace, but his theory was not pragmatic.
Kant opposed direct democracy, believing that majority rule posed a threat to individual liberty.
Kant's political philosophy is based on a legal doctrine and rejects the opposition between moral education and the play of passions as alternate foundations for social life.
Kant's conception of religion was initially seen as coherent with Christianity, but later interpretations have seen him as hostile to religion in general.
Kant's aesthetic theory is based on the subjective nature of aesthetic qualities and experiences.
Kant's theory of humor is based on an "incongruity" theory.
Kant's anthropology lectures were influential in the development of the field.
Kant's theory of race and his prejudicial beliefs are among the most contentious areas of recent Kant scholarship.
Kant was a proponent of scientific racism for much of his career, but his views on race changed significantly in the last decade of his life.