Immanuel Kant

english dictionaryish

categorical imperative

David Hume

critique of pure reason

Friedrich Nietzsche

Arthur Schopenhauer

G.W.F. Hegel

deontology

morality

consequences

practical reason

lying

truth-telling

empiricism

rationalism

italics

punctuation

typography

is almost alone among the philosophers in being bothered by the common opinion that philosophy is only for the few, precisely because of its moral implications; namely that the ability to tell right from wrong should turn out to have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to "demand" its exercise from every sane person, no matter how erudite or ignorant, intelligent or stupid, he may happen to be.

If ... the ability to tell right from wrong should turn out to have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to "demand" its exercise from every sane person, no matter how erudite or ignorant, intelligent or stupid, he may happen to be. Kant—in this respect almost alone among the philosophers—was much bothered by the common opinion that philosophy is only for the few, precisely because of its moral implications.

is an idealist who separated the phenomenal world from a world of "things in themselves." He believed that science could offer only mechanical explanations, but he affirmed that in areas where such explanations were inadequate, scientific knowledge needed to be supplemented by considering nature as being purposeful.

An idealist, Kant separated the phenomenal world from a world of "things in themselves." He believed that science could offer only mechanical explanations, but he affirmed that in areas where such explanations were inadequate, scientific knowledge needed to be supplemented by considering nature as being purposeful.

is unable to carry out a true critique because he was not able to pose the problem of critique in terms of values.

is representative of a stern reaction against the egoism and hedonism of his era.

He represented a stern reaction against the egoism and hedonism in which Helvetius and Holbach had formulated the life of their reckless era, very much as Luther had reacted against the luxury and laxity of Mediterranean Italy. But after a century of reaction against the absolutism of Kant’s ethics, we find ourselves again in a welter of urban sensualism and immorality, of ruthless individualism untempered with democratic conscience or aristocratic honor; and perhaps the day will soon come when a disintegrating civilization will welcome again the Kantian call to duty… After a century of struggle between the idealism of Kant, variously reformed, and the materialism of the Enlightenment, variously redressed, the victory seems to lie with Kant. Philosophy will never again be so naive as in her earlier and simpler days; she must always be different hereafter, and profounder, because Kant lived.

is responsible for the realizing that the setting up of a real external world would be senseless without the mysterious comprehensibility of the world, a world set up via sense experiences put in order by the operation of thinking.

The very fact that the totality of our sense experiences is such that by means of thinking (operations with concepts, and the creation and use of definite functional relations between them, and the coordination of sense experiences to these concepts) it can be put in order, this fact is one which leaves us in awe, but which we shall never understand. One may say " the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility." It is one of the great realizations of Immanuel Kant that the setting up of a real external world would be senseless without this comprehensibility.

is the one who showed us that knowledge is only possible to acquire through a particular set of rules and only for a special field of application, and like a game, in which, while the rules themselves are arbitrary, it is their rigidity alone which makes the game possible.

All that is necessary is the statement of a set of rules, since without such rules the acquisition of knowledge in the desired sense would be impossible. One may compare these rules with the rules of a game in which, while the rules themselves are arbitrary, it is their rigidity alone which makes the game possible. However, the fixation will never be final. It will have validity only for a special field of application (i.e. there are no final categories in the sense of Kant).

made perception not a connection with the thing but a "barrier" between subject and object.

is concerned with a project that is simply epistemological rather than ontological.

Immanuel Kant, n.All

Immanuel Kant