Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant (German: Immanuel Kant; April 22, 1724 - February 12, 1804) was a German philosopher during the Enlightenment Era and the founder of German classical philosophy. His teachings deeply influenced modern Western philosophy and initiated many schools such as German idealism and Kantian deontology. And influenced later generations, giving birth to Neo-Kantianism. Kant was the last major philosopher of the Enlightenment and a representative figure in German thought. He reconciled the rationalism of René Descartes with the empiricism of Francis Bacon and is considered one of the most influential thinkers in the West after Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Kant has his own ideological system, of which the three core works are collectively called the "Three Critiques", namely the "Critique of Pure Reason", the "Critique of Practical Reason" and the "Critique of Judgment". These three works systematically elaborate on his knowledge, ethics and aesthetics thoughts respectively. The Critique of Pure Reason has received particular attention from the academic community, marking the shift in the main direction of philosophical research from ontology to epistemology. It is an epoch-making masterpiece in the history of Western philosophy. In addition, Kant also has important works in the fields of religious philosophy, legal philosophy and historical philosophy. A basic starting point of Kant's philosophical theory is that the ability to transform perceptual intuition (experience) into knowledge - pure intellectual concepts (i.e. "categories"), and the ability to practice ideas outside knowledge (such as God, the immortal soul, free will) - pure rational concepts are all functions of reason and are innate to humans. Without them we would not be able to understand the world. His epistemology and ethics were to demonstrate knowledge and morality respectively. He criticized and absorbed British empiricism (Hume, Berkeley) and European rationalism (mainly the rational tradition of Wolf-Leibniz), and had a profound influence on German idealism (Fichte and Hegel) and romanticism. Epistemology ("Critique of Pure Reason") and ethics ("Critique of Practical Reason") constitute the two major parts of Kant's philosophy. The former is about the "phenomenal world"; the latter is about "freedom of will" and is opposite and dichotomous. The intermediary between the two becomes the final thought of Kant's "Critical Philosophy", and the communication and unity of nature and freedom lie in the "Critique of Judgment". In addition, he also proposed the first modern theoretical explanation for the formation of the solar system, the Kant-Laplace hypothesis.