Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)

Pioneer and founder of classical German philosophy; great philosopher in the history of Western Philosophy.

Kant was born on April 22, 1724, in the East Prussian city of Königsberg (present-day Kaliningrad, Russia), into a saddle maker’s family. In 1740 he enrolled in the University of Königsberg as a theological student. He attended theology classes and preached occasionally, but his main interests were in mathematics and physics, which he was forced to abandon in 1746 after the death of his father and his failure to secure a job as a teacher at one of the university’s affiliated schools. For the next nine years he worked as a tutor in three homes. It was not until April 1755 that he submitted his M.A. thesis, De Igne (On Fire), to the Faculty of Philosophy, where he was awarded the M.A. degree in Philosophy after an oral examination. He then defended his dissertation Principiorum Primorum Cognitionis Metaphysicae Nova Dilucidato (New Elucidation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Cognition) as a “thesis for qualification to teach at the university” and was awarded the position of Privatdozent (lecturer) at the University of Königsberg. 1770 Kant was appointed professor of logic and metaphysics at the University of Königsberg, a position he held until his retirement in 1801.

Kant’s philosophical thoughts can be divided into two phases: “the pre-critical period” (1755–1770) and “the critical period” (1770–1800). The main works of the pre-critical Period are: Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755), New Elucidation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Cognition (1755), Physical Monadology (1756), Enquiry into the Proofs for the Existence of God (1763), An Inquiry into the Distinctness of the Fundamental Principles of Natural Theology and Morals (1764), On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible Worlds (1770), and others. In particular, Kant’s Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, published in 1755, put forth the “nebular hypothesis” on the origin of the solar system, criticized Leibniz-Wolff teleological cosmology, and put forth the first scientifically grounded theory of the spontaneous genesis and development of the universe in the modern era, which has the idea of natural-scientific materialism.

During his critical period, Kant wrote three famous critiques: Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and Critique of Judgment (1790), and he also published a series of important philosophical works: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783) and Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786), Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795), and Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798) and other works established Kant’s system of critical philosophy. Among these works, Critique of Pure Reason is to answer the question “What can I know”, chiefly probing into questions ontology and epistemology; Critique of Practical Reason is to answer the question “What ought I to do”, chiefly probing into questions of ethics; and Critique of Judgment is to answer the question “What can I hope”, chiefly probing into questions of aesthetics.

In 1781, Kant published his Critique of Pure Reason, which aimed, on the one hand, to criticize the Leibniz-Wolff ideological system of dogmatic philosophy, and on the other hand, to try to justify and establish the foundations of his own system of “critical philosophy”. According to Kant, the problem of any science or metaphysics is that, on the one hand, its principles are universal and necessary, and on the other hand, it must be able to add new knowledge. What simultaneously possesses these two features is the a priori synthetic judgment. Therefore, Kant’s main question to be solved is “how is a priori synthetic judgment possible”, that is, “how is it possible” to add new knowledge as well as possess universality and necessity? Kant breaks down this question and answers it in turn: How is mathematical knowledge possible? How is natural science, i.e., physics, possible? How is metaphysics as a natural tendency possible? Through critical examination, the main question Kant seeks to address in the Critique of Pure Reason is the question of how human cognition and knowledge are possible, or, the question of what we as human beings are capable of knowing after all. Critique of Pure Reason includes two parts: transcendental doctrine of elements and transcendental doctrine of method. The transcendental doctrine of elements is sub-divided into the transcendental doctrine of sensuousness and the transcendental doctrine of logic (including the transcendental doctrine of logic and the transcendental doctrine of dialectics). Kant divided the process of human cognition into three major stages: sensuousness, understanding, and reason, and held that human cognition can only grasp the “realm of phenomena” but not the “Ding an sich” (thing-in-itself). His philosophical thought has the philosophical tendency of dualism and agnosticism.

In 1788, Kant published the Critique of Practical Reason, a work of ethics that mainly deals with his moral philosophy thought. In this work, Kant probed into the origin, nature and role of morality, as well as moral education and upbringing, forming a complete system of his moral philosophy. The Critique of Practical Reason is divided into two parts: the doctrine of principles of practical reason (including the analytics of practical reason and dialectics of practical reason) and the doctrine of method of practical reason. The analytics of practical reason chiefly deals with the three core questions of ethics: “universal form of legislation”, “man is the purpose” and “free will”, and chiefly probes into questions such as the origin, essence, the notion of good and evil and moral sentiments. The dialectics of practical reason chiefly probes into questions such as the “antinomy” and “supreme good” of practical reason, as well as sentiments and moral religion. The doctrine of method of practical reason chiefly probes into moral education and upbringing.

Critique of Judgment, published in 1790, is a work of aesthetics. The work is centered on man and chiefly probes into the aesthetic and teleological judgments of man. In the Critique of Judgment, Kant attempts to overcome the contradiction between science and morality by appealing to man’s artistic potential, and completes his philosophical system of the unity of knowledge, feeling and will as well as the unity of truth, goodness and beauty.

Kant made important contributions in the spheres of philosophy of nature, ontology, epistemology, ethics and aesthetics, etc., inherited and developed the critical tradition of French enlightenment thinkers. The system of transcendental critical philosophy established by Kant overthrew Leibniz-Wolff philosophical system of dogmatic metaphysics, unveiled a prelude to the philosophical revolution of the German bourgeoisie, and had a significant impact on the Hegelian philosophy, as well as on the emergence of Marx’s philosophy, which is the important ideological and theoretical source of Marxist philosophy. In his speech given at the Symposium on Philosophical and Social Sciences on May 17, 2016, General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that the birth of Marxism was a great event in the history of human thought, while Marxism critically assimilated philosophical thought of Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, the utopian socialist thought of Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen, and the classical political economy of Adam Smith and David Ricardo.

Kant died in Königsberg on February 12, 1804. The words on his tombstone are: “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”