Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

• A German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers.

• Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics have made him one of the most influential and controversial figures in modern Western philosophy, being called the "father of modern ethics", the "father of modern aesthetics", and for bringing together rationalism and empiricism earned the title of "father of modern philosophy".

• In his doctrine of transcendental idealism, Kant argued that space and time are mere "forms of intuition" that structure all experience and that the objects of experience are mere "appearances". The nature of things as they are in themselves is unknowable to us. In an attempt to counter the philosophical doctrine of skepticism, he wrote the Critique of Pure Reason, his best-known work. Kant drew a parallel to the Copernican Revolution in his proposal to think of the objects of experience as conforming to our spatial and temporal forms of intuition and the categories of our understanding, so that we have a priori cognition of those objects. These claims have proved especially influential in the social sciences, particularly sociology and anthropology, which regard human activities as pre-oriented by cultural norms.

• Kant believed that reason is the source of morality, and that aesthetics arises from a faculty of disinterested judgment. Kant's religious views were deeply connected to his moral theory. Their exact nature remains in dispute. He hoped that perpetual peace could be secured through an international federation of republican states and international cooperation. His cosmopolitan reputation is called into question by his promulgation of scientific racism for much of his career, although he altered his views on the subject in the last decade of his life.

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Quotes by Kant:

• Freedom is the alone unoriginated birthright of man, and belongs to him by force of his humanity; and is independence on the will and co-action of every other in so far as this consists with every other person's freedom.

• Freedom in the practical sense is the independence of the power of choice from necessitation by impulses of sensibility.

• Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing. Only through their unison can knowledge arise.

• Things which we see are not by themselves what we see... It remains completely unknown to us what the objects may be by themselves and apart from the receptivity of our senses. We know nothing but our manner of perceiving them.

• Philosophy stands in need of a science which shall determine the possibility, principles, and extent of human knowledge a priori.

• ​All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

• ​Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

• Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

• Do the right thing because it is right.

• Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.

• ​Without man and his potential for moral progress, the whole of reality would be a mere wilderness, a thing in vain, and have no final purpose.

• Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another.

• The only thing permanent is change.

• All perception is colored by emotion.

• ​Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

• Philosophical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason from concepts; mathematical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason from the construction of concepts.

• Enlightenment is man's leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if it is not caused by lack of intelligence, but by lack of determination and courage to use one's intelligence without being guided by another. Sapere Aude! Have the courage to use your own intelligence! is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.

• Genius is the ability to independently arrive at and understand concepts that would normally have to be taught by another person.

• The only thing that is good without qualification is a good will.

• He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.

• The death of dogma is the birth of morality.

• A lie is a lie, and in itself intrinsically evil, whether it be told with good or bad intents.

• If the truth shall kill them, let them die.

• Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end.

• Democracy is necessarily despotism, as it establishes an executive power contrary to the general will; all being able to decide against one whose opinion may differ, the will of all is therefore not that of all: which is contradictory and opposite to liberty.

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