Immanuel Kant
Question the limits of reason.
Kant asks what we can know, what we ought to do and what we may hope. His critical philosophy seeks to understand reason’s powers without granting it unlimited access to every aspect of reality.
How can we think freely without forgetting what we owe to others?
Biography
Kant spends almost his entire life in Königsberg, a university and trading city in East Prussia. A teacher, attentive reader of science and participant in the European Enlightenment, he gradually develops a philosophy that transforms questions of knowledge, morality and judgement. His regular habits should not obscure the breadth of the debates in which he participates.
02 /Philosophy
We do not simply receive an already organised world: sensibility and understanding contribute to the form of experience. For Kant, space, time and the categories are not arbitrary personal inventions. They enable objective knowledge of appearances while limiting what we can assert beyond them.
03 /Reading guides
Original introductions to enter the works, discover their central questions and take the reflection further.
04 /Bibliography
Works, testimonies and further readings are distinguished. Dates refer to composition or first publication, as specified in each entry.
A first reading.
What it means to know
Approach the first Critique through its project and fundamental distinctions, without confusing the limits of knowledge with relativism.
Critique of Pure ReasonActing without reducing others to means
Read the Groundwork’s three sections through good will, maxims and respect for persons.
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of MoralsThinking for yourself, together
A short essay for examining intellectual dependence and the conditions of thought that can be publicly challenged.
An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?