Immanuel Kant: biography of this important German philosopher.

Summary of the life of Immanuel Kant, German philosopher who greatly influenced Western thought.

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher whose name has not gone unnoticed, since his thought has been of great relevance to Western philosophy.

He is considered the great German Enlightenment thinker and, in fact, it has been said that all philosophy prior to Kantian philosophy is ancient, that it was he who generated an authentic philosophical revolution in his time.

Let's see who this thinker was and what he wrote about through this biography of Immanuel Kant in summarized format.

Immanuel Kant summary biography.

Immanuel Kant was born on April 22, 1724 in Königsberg, Germany (present-day Kaliningrad, Russia), into a modest family of Scottish origin. His education was strongly based on Lutheran pietism, professed by his mother. It is for this reason that the young Immanuel studied at the Collegium Fridericianuma pietist institution where he would leave with a good knowledge of classical language and culture.

Later, in 1740, he enrolled at the university, where he received lessons in Newtonian physics and mathematics, which inspired him to write his first work nine years later: Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte ("Thoughts on the true estimation of living forces").

After the death of his father Immanuel Kant was forced to earn his living by giving home tuition to the children of wealthy families during the children of wealthy families during the period between 1746 and 1754. Thanks to having acquired the title of free teacher, he began to teach various subjects, among which we can find exact sciences such as mathematics and physics, as well as aspects more related to philosophy such as its history, logic and morals.

Teaching and early writings

In 1755 he obtained his doctorate with his thesis Meditationum quarundam de igne succinta delineatio ("Brief outline of some meditations on fire"), and then free teaching with the dissertation Principiorum primorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae nova dilucidatio ("New elucidation of the first principles of metaphysical knowledge").

It would also be around this time that he would publish, anonymously, his "Historia universal de la naturaleza y teoría del cielo" ("Universal History of Nature and Theory of Heaven"). In this work he exposed his thesis on the formation of the solar system, which would have been formed from an original nebula.. Although it did not have much repercussion in its initial moment, later, the physicist Laplace in 1796 would propose something similar, which was later baptized as the Kant-Laplace hypothesis.

The year 1769 is a key year in Kantian thinking because, although he had already written his first texts, it was from this year onwards that he began to write several works in which he was critical of the paths that the philosophy of his time had been taking, daring to express his opinion on some of the greatest thinkers of the time. It is for this reason that this year is considered the dividing line between two moments in his trajectory as a writer and thinker.

Before this year we talked about the pre-critical period, in which he did some works that talked about metaphysics, but not being too critical. Then comes the critical stage, in which he is already the author of the great works for which he is known, such as "Critique of Pure Reason" or "What is Enlightenment?"

A year later, in 1770, the university of his hometown, Königsberg, took him on as a professor of logic and metaphysics, giving him a certain economic and academic security.giving him a certain economic and academic security, gaining him a more or less permanent place. In addition to being a great teacher and being quite appreciated by his students, Kant devoted himself with great dedication to the elaboration of new writings.

Final years

Although prolific, Kant's life was not exactly that of someone who traveled a great deal. He remained almost all his life in Königsberg, and it was there, in fact, that he spent most of his life in Königsberg and, in fact, it was in that Prussian city where he died due to complications from arteriosclerosis on the night of February 12, 1804, having earned the fame of being the greatest representative of the German Enlightenment.

As an anecdote of his life, or rather, of the end of his life, being already decrepit, almost blind and without a very good memory, that, already seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, he pronounced, perhaps half delirious, perhaps already accepting the time to leave, the words "es ist gut", "it's okay" in German. Then he would say "Genug" ("that's enough") and breathe his last breath.

Although he died in 1804, several decades later, between 1879 and 1881, a collection was made to build a chapel for him as a monument. Nowadays, Kant's tomb is located outside the Cathedral of present-day Kaliningrad, on the Pregolya River.on the Pregolya River. It is one of the few German monuments preserved by the Soviets after conquering the city and annexing it in 1945. The previous tomb had been destroyed that same year because of Russian bombing.

Main works

It is not possible to speak of Kant's life without mentioning the titles of his works, which have undoubtedly had a great impact on Western thought.which, undoubtedly, have had a great impact on Western thought. These works can be encompassed within the two periods previously mentioned.

In the pre-critical phase we have: The Only Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God (1762). Dreams of a Visionary Explained by the Dreams of Metaphysics (1766). Observations on the sentiment of the beautiful and the sublime (1764).

In his critical phase we have:

• Critique of pure reason (1781).
• Prolegomena to all future metaphysics (1783).
• Idea of a universal history in a cosmopolitan sense (1784).
• What is the Enlightenment? (1784)
• Critique of Practical Reason (1785)
• Critique of Judgment (1790)
• Religion within the Limits of Reason (1793)
• Perpetual Peace (1795)
• Disputation between the Faculties (1797)
• Anthropology in the Pragmatic Sense (1800)
• Logic (1800)

Philosophical thought

Of the various works mentioned above, his "Critique of Pure Reason" is considered one, if not the most important, of the Kantian works, his "Critique of Pure Reason" is considered one, if not the most important, of the Kantian works and of great impact on European thought.. In addition, we have "Critique of Practical Reason" and, in addition, it is worth mentioning his conception of law and the state.

Critique of pure reason

In the "Critique of Pure Reason" Immanuel Kant asks himself whether it is possible that metaphysics, currently seen as purely philosophical, could become a scientific discipline. In his view, the conception and treatment that metaphysics had received made it something that, so far, lacked a solid foundation..

In order to advance in this aspect and to achieve, someday, that such metaphysics becomes scientific, it is necessary to proceed to a critique of reason, by means of which the conditions of possibility and the limits of validity of the intellectual capacity of the human being in the different fields of mental activity are determined.

This work was first published in 1781, although its second edition, in 1787, included many modifications. It is considered a fundamental milestone in the history of Western philosophy, since its approach constitutes a synthesis between two philosophical trends of great importance at the time: empiricism and rationalism.

These two tendencies were confronted by the fact of how the way in which human beings acquire knowledge was conceived.. While empiricism started from the idea that knowledge could be obtained by means of sensations, that is, by means of external impressions, rationalism considered that general rules could be found by means of reason.

From the publication of the "Critique of pure reason" the idea that it makes no sense to ask about the problem of human knowledge, without first questioning what is the limit of that knowledge, This limit is determined by the very nature of human beings.. Beyond that limit, it is impossible to know more.

2. Critique of practical reason

The "Critique of Practical Reason", whose importance is comparable to that of the previous work, was published in 1788, is the most important work in Kantian thought when it comes to morality..

It attempts to determine the nature of the moral law. Obligation becomes a law that reason imposes on the will. Respect for this law is established as the only motive for action.

3. Law and the State

Law is the aspect of human society that has the purpose of establishing the conditions that make it possible for all human beings that make up a society to have particular freedom but that this freedom respects that of others. In the work, he deals with individual freedom in such a way that it has helped the constitution of what would later be called legal positivism..

Kant speaks of the state as something that is constituted by the agreement of wills that are embodied in laws. The laws, which should be fixed by the majority, are a legal convention: whoever respects them is within the law, whoever does not, is outside. All dissenting or contrary conduct to these laws are interpreted as conduct outside the law.