A childhood in Königsberg
Immanuel Kant is born on 22 April into an artisan family. His education is shaped by Pietism, and he enters the University of Königsberg in 1740. Philosophy and natural science both inform his earliest investigations.
Critical philosophy · 1724–1804
Immanuel Kant
Question the limits of reason.
Königsberg, Prussia · present-day Kaliningrad
Biography
The thread of a life.
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.
Teaching and investigating
After several years as a private tutor, Kant begins teaching at the university in 1755. His lectures cover many fields. Appointed professor of logic and metaphysics in 1770, he spends the following decade preparing his critical philosophy.
The first Critique
Critique of Pure Reason appears in 1781, followed by a substantially revised second edition in 1787. Kant examines the conditions of experience and the illusions that arise when reason claims knowledge beyond its legitimate limits.
Morality, freedom and judgement
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals appears in 1785, Critique of Practical Reason in 1788 and Critique of the Power of Judgment in 1790. Moral autonomy, beauty and the organisation of living beings become major subjects of his system.
Tensions in the public use of reason
His writings on religion bring a royal reprimand in 1794. He continues reflecting on peace, right and enlightenment. Kant dies in Königsberg on 12 February 1804, leaving a body of work whose interpretations remain deeply contested.
Understanding a life in depth
01Königsberg, science and teaching
Born in Königsberg in 1724 into an artisan family, Kant received a Pietist education before entering university in 1740. He subsequently worked as a private tutor and became a Privatdozent in 1755. His income long depended on lectures covering logic, metaphysics, physics, geography and anthropology. His earliest publications investigated forces, cosmology and earthquakes. This scientific activity is essential to understanding his development: critical philosophy did not emerge from abandoning science but from asking about its claims, methods and conditions of validity. His teaching career also placed him in sustained contact with students and the intellectual concerns of his city.
02The slow construction of critique
In 1770 Kant obtained the chair of logic and metaphysics. His inaugural dissertation already distinguished the sensible from the intelligible, but did not yet contain the complete critical solution. The February 1772 letter to Marcus Herz formulated the problem of the relationship between representations and objects. After a long period without a major book, the Critique of Pure Reason appeared in 1781. Its difficult reception prompted the Prolegomena in 1783 and a substantially revised second edition in 1787. Hume’s influence mattered here without explaining every stage of this transformation or replacing its other intellectual sources.
03Morality, judgment and public life
The Groundwork of 1785 and the Critique of Practical Reason of 1788 investigate autonomy and moral obligation. The Critique of Judgment of 1790 then examines beauty, sublimity and natural purposiveness. Alongside them Kant published essays on enlightenment, history and peace. These domains are not simply independent pieces of advice: they explore different uses of the same reason. Their universalist ambitions must nevertheless be confronted with racial hierarchies and exclusions based on sex found elsewhere in his writings. Acknowledging those tensions is part of interpreting the corpus rather than a reason to protect its central claims from criticism.
04Censorship, late work and archives
Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason prompted intervention by the Prussian government in 1794. Kant then pledged not to address these issues publicly during Frederick William II’s reign. The Conflict of the Faculties subsequently returned to academic freedom. After retiring from teaching, he continued working on a transition between the metaphysics of nature and physics, now known as the Opus postumum. He died in 1804. Editions of his notes and lectures recorded by students are valuable sources, but their status differs from that of a book revised and published by Kant himself.
Autonomy, dignity and the critical examination of reason’s claims have durably transformed philosophy. Yet Kant also articulates racial hierarchies and sexist prejudices in some anthropological and historical writings. Interpretations of their evolution remain debated. Acknowledging them requires examining the tension between his universal principles and the exclusions present in his work.
Sources & reference points