Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher whose late-18th-century work reorganized Western philosophy and remains foundational to modern epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, and political theory. He was born on April 22, 1724, in Königsberg, the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia), the fourth of nine children of a harness-maker. His Pietist upbringing and early education at the Collegium Fridericianum shaped a lifelong rigor of thought and discipline.

He entered the University of Königsberg in 1740, studying philosophy, mathematics, and physics, and after years as a private tutor returned to the university as a lecturer in 1755 and full professor of logic and metaphysics in 1770. For more than four decades he lived a famously regimented life in Königsberg — never traveling more than a few miles from the city — and his daily walk was said to be so punctual that neighbors set their clocks by it.

His 1781 Critique of Pure Reason proposed that human knowledge arises neither purely from experience (as the British empiricists held) nor purely from reason (as the Continental rationalists held) but from the structuring activity of the mind itself, which imposes the categories of space, time, and causation on raw sensory data. He followed it with the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), establishing the categorical imperative as the foundation of his moral philosophy, and the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790), grounding modern aesthetics. His 1795 essay Perpetual Peace outlined a federation of republican states that anticipated the League of Nations and the United Nations.

He died on February 12, 1804, in Königsberg, two months short of his 80th birthday. His final words were reported as Es ist gut ("It is good"). His three Critiques and his moral and political writings are continuously studied as the pivot point between early modern and contemporary philosophy, and the term "Kantian" remains a working adjective in 21st-century philosophical discourse.

His name Immanuel is from the Hebrew 'Immānū'ēl meaning "God is with us," a name applied in the Book of Isaiah to a prophesied child and identified in Christian tradition with Jesus. He carried the Biblical name into the heart of the German Enlightenment, lending it a lasting philosophical resonance distinct from its religious origin.