Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

Major works

•          Critique of Pure Reason (human reason)

•          Critique of Practical Reason (ethics)

•          Critique of Judgment (aesthetics)

•          Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone

Importance

•          Most important philosopher of the Enlightenment

•          His approach to knowledge combined elements from both rationalism and empiricism; He said all of our knowledge of the outside world comes to us via our senses but the mind also contributes to our knowledge of reality. The mind processes the data

•          We do not know reality as it is in itself

•          Made a distinction between phenomena and noumena

•          Rejected all metaphysical knowledge (Kant bifurcated knowledge and put God in the upper story)

•          Rejected all metaphysical arguments for the existence of God, including the ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments

•          Made a distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions

•          Applied the “categorical imperative”—“Act only on the maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law” (moral oughtness)

•          The notions of God, freedom, and immortality were regulative principles; though indemonstrable they gave coherence to ethical thought and behavior

•          Grounded theology in morality instead of morality in theology

•          Christianity was a way of teaching ethics for the philosophically unsophisticated

•          Jesus was an enlightened moral teacher

•          Said Hume awakened him from his dogmatic slumbers

•          Held that enlightenment is man’s emergence from immaturity, man may think for himself without relying on some authority such as the Bible, church, or state