Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kantwas a German philosopher who is considered the central figure of modern philosophy. Kant argued that fundamental concepts of the human mind structure human experience, that reason is the source of morality, that aesthetics arises from a faculty of disinterested judgment, that space and time are forms of our sensibility, and that the world as it is "in-itself" is unknowable. Kant took himself to have effected a Copernican revolution in philosophy, akin to Copernicus' reversal of the age-old belief...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth22 April 1724
CountryGermany
The enjoyment of power inevitably corrupts the judgment of reason, and perverts its liberty.
Man must be disciplined, for he is by nature raw and wild.
. . . as to moral feeling, this supposed special sense, the appeal to it is indeed superficial when those who cannot think believe that feeling will help them out, even in what concerns general laws: and besides, feelings which naturally differ infinitely in degree cannot furnish a uniform standard of good and evil, nor has any one a right to form judgments for others by his own feelings. . . .
The yellow Indians do have a meagre talent. The Negroes are far below them, and at the lowest point are a part of the American people.
Imagination is a powerful agent for creating, as it were, a second nature out of the material supplied to it by actual nature.
Freedom is that faculty that enlarges the usefulness of all other faculties.
Things which we see are not by themselves what we see ... It remains completely unknown to us what the objects may be by themselves and apart from the receptivity of our senses. We know nothing but our manner of perceiving them.
Humanity is at its greatest perfection in the race of the whites.
All our knowledge begins with the senses,
But only he who, himself enlightened, is not afraid of shadows.
In every department of physical science there is only so much science, properly so-called, as there is mathematics.
cruelty to animals is contrary to man's duty to himself, because it deadens in him the feeling of sympathy for their sufferings, and thus a natural tendency that is very useful to morality in relation to other human beings is weakened.
If, like Hume, I had all manner of adornment in my power, I would still have reservations about using them. It is true that some readers will be scared off by dryness. But isn't it necessary to scare off some if in their case the matter would end up in bad hands?
[R]eason is... given to us as a practical faculty, that is, as one that influences the will....