Königsberg philosopher whose Critique of Pure Reason drew the limits of knowledge and became the starting point of German idealism
Born in 1724 to a harness-maker's family in Königsberg in East Prussia, he became professor of logic and metaphysics at his home university in 1770 and taught until 1796. In the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) he argued that we know only appearances, shaped by space, time and the categories of the understanding, never things in themselves; the Critique of Practical Reason (1788) and the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790) carried the critique into morality and aesthetics. German idealism grew out of the revisions of his teaching by Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, though Kant publicly denounced Fichte in 1799. Hegel faulted Kant for setting the knowing subject apart from nature, history and society, and with that critique begins the line that runs to Marx.
Also known as: Emanuel Kant
Activities and affiliations
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1770–1796
Germany state institutionsProfessor of logic and metaphysics, University of KönigsbergMain
Scholarship and theory -
1786–1788
Germany state institutionsRector of the University of Königsberg
Education
Career Timeline
- 1740Enrolled at the University of Königsberg
- 1755Lecturer at the University of Königsberg
- 1770–1796Professor of logic and metaphysics at Königsberg
- 1781Critique of Pure Reason
- 1786Rector of the University of Königsberg
- 1788Critique of Practical Reason; second term as rector
- 1790Critique of the Power of Judgment
- 1794Royal order forbidding him to publish on religion
- 1799Open letter denouncing Fichte