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Immanuel Kant

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Philosophers

   Western Philosophy
   18th-century philosophy
   Immanuel Kant in middle age
   Name: Immanuel Kant
   Birth: April 22, 1724 ( Königsberg, Kingdom of Prussia) (Now
   Kaliningrad, Russia)
   Death: February 12, 1804 ( Königsberg, Kingdom of Prussia)
   School/tradition: Kantianism, Enlightenment philosophy
   Main interests: Epistemology, Metaphysics, Ethics
   Notable ideas: Categorical imperative, Transcendental Idealism,
   Synthetic a priori, Noumenon, Sapere aude
   Influences: Wolff, Tetens, Hutcheson, Empiricus, Montaigne, Hume,
   Descartes, Malebranche, Leibniz, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Rousseau,
   Newton
   Influenced: Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Peirce,
   Husserl, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Sartre, Cassirer, Habermas, Rawls,
   and many more

   Immanuel Kant ( 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804), was a German
   philosopher from Königsberg in East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia).
   He is regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of modern Europe
   and the last major philosopher of the Enlightenment.

Biography

Early life

   Immanuel Kant — who was baptized as "Emanuel" but later changed his
   name to "Immanuel" after he learned Hebrew — was born in 1724 in
   Königsberg, Kingdom of Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia) as the fourth
   of nine children (five of them reached adulthood). He spent his entire
   life in and around his hometown, the capital of East Prussia at that
   time. His father Johann Georg Kant (1682-1746) was a German craftsman
   from Memel, Germany's northeasternmost city (now Klaipėda, Lithuania)
   and his mother Anna Regina Porter (1697-1737) was the daughter of a
   saddle/harness maker. In his youth, Kant was a solid, albeit
   unspectacular, student. He was raised in a Pietist household, a
   then-popular Lutheran reform movement that stressed intense religious
   devotion, personal humility, and a literal reading of the Bible.
   Consequently, Kant received a stern education — strict, punitive, and
   disciplinary — that favored Latin and religious instruction over
   mathematics and science.

The young scholar

   Kant enrolled in the University of Königsberg in 1740, at the age of
   16. He studied the philosophy of Leibniz and Wolff under Martin
   Knutsen, a rationalist who was also familiar with the developments of
   British philosophy and science and who introduced Kant to the new
   mathematical physics of Newton. His father's stroke and subsequent
   death in 1746 interrupted his studies. Kant became a private tutor in
   the smaller towns surrounding Königsberg, but continued his scholarly
   research. 1749 saw the publication of his first philosophical work,
   Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces. Kant published
   several more works on scientific topics and became a university
   lecturer in 1755. From this point on, Kant turned increasingly to
   philosophical issues, although he would continue to write on the
   sciences throughout his life. In the early 1760s, Kant produced a
   series of important works in philosophy. The False Subtlety of the Four
   Syllogistic Figures, a work in logic, was published in 1762. Two more
   works appeared the following year: Attempt to Introduce the Concept of
   Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy and The Only Possible Argument in
   Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God. In 1764, Kant wrote
   Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime and then was
   second to Moses Mendelssohn in a Berlin Academy prize competition with
   his Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural
   Theology and Morality (often referred to as "the Prize Essay"). In
   1770, at the age of 45, Kant was finally appointed Professor of Logic
   and Metaphysics at the University of Königsberg. Kant wrote his
   Inaugural Dissertation in defense of this appointment. This work saw
   the emergence of several central themes of his mature work, including
   the distinction between the faculties of intellectual thought and
   sensible receptivity.

The critical turn

   At the age of 46, Kant was an established scholar and an increasingly
   influential philosopher. Much was expected of him. In response to a
   letter from his student, Markus Herz, Kant came to recognize that in
   the Inaugural Dissertation, he had failed to account for the relation
   and connection between our sensible and intellectual faculties. He also
   credited David Hume with awakening him from "dogmatic slumber" (circa
   1770). Kant would not publish another work in philosophy for the next
   eleven years.

   Kant spent his silent decade working on a solution to the problems
   posed. Though fond of company and conversation with others, Kant
   isolated himself, despite friends' attempts to bring him out of his
   isolation. In 1778, in response to one of these offers by a former
   pupil, Kant wrote "Any change makes me apprehensive, even if it offers
   the greatest promise of improving my condition, and I am persuaded by
   this natural instinct of mine that I must take heed if I wish that the
   threads which the Fates spin so thin and weak in my case to be spun to
   any length. My great thanks, to my well-wishers and friends, who think
   so kindly of me as to undertake my welfare, but at the same time a most
   humble request to protect me in my current condition from any
   disturbance."

   When Kant emerged from his silence in 1781, the result was the Critique
   of Pure Reason. Although now uniformly recognized as one of the
   greatest works in the history of philosophy, this Critique was largely
   ignored upon its initial publication. The book was long, over 800 pages
   in the original German edition, and written in a dry, scholastic style.
   It received few reviews, and these failed to recognize the Critique's
   revolutionary nature. Its density made it, as Johann Gottfried Herder
   put it in a letter to Johann Georg Hamann, a "tough nut to crack",
   obscured by "...all this heavy gossamer." This is in stark contrast,
   however, with the praise Kant received for earlier works such as the
   aformentioned "Prize Essay" and other shorter works that precede the
   first Critique. These well-received and readable tracts include one on
   the earthquake in Lisbon which was so popular that it was sold by the
   page. Prior to the critical turn, his books sold well, and by the time
   he published Observations On the Feeling of the Beautiful and the
   Sublime in 1764 he was known to be a popular author of some note. Kant
   was disappointed with the first Critique's reception. Recognizing the
   need of clarifying the original treatise, Kant wrote the Prolegomena to
   any Future Metaphysics in 1783 as a summary of its main views and he
   encouraged his friend, Johann Schultz, to publish a brief commentary of
   the Critique of Pure Reason.

   Kant's reputation gradually rose through the 1780s, sparked by a series
   of important works: the 1784 essay, " Answer to the Question: What is
   Enlightenment?"; 1785's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (his
   first work on moral philosophy); and, from 1786, Metaphysical
   Foundations of Natural Science. But Kant's fame ultimately arrived from
   an unexpected source. In 1786, Karl Reinhold began to publish a series
   of public letters on the Kantian philosophy. In these letters, Reinhold
   framed Kant's philosophy as a response to the central intellectual
   controversy of the era: the Pantheism Dispute. Friedrich Jacobi had
   accused the recently deceased G. E. Lessing (a distinguished dramatist
   and philosophical essayist) of Spinozism. Such a charge, tantamount to
   atheism, was vigorously denied by Lessing's friend Moses Mendelssohn,
   and a bitter public dispute arose between them. The controversy
   gradually escalated into a general debate over the values of the
   Enlightenment and of reason itself. Reinhold maintained in his letters
   that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason could settle this dispute by
   defending the authority and bounds of reason. Reinhold's letters were
   widely read and made Kant the most famous philosopher of his era.

Kant's later work

   Immanuel Kant, detail from a 1791 watercolour by Gottlieb Doeppler
   Enlarge
   Immanuel Kant, detail from a 1791 watercolour by Gottlieb Doeppler

   Kant published a second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1787,
   heavily revising the first parts of the book. Most of his subsequent
   work focused on other areas of philosophy. He continued to develop his
   moral philosophy, notably in 1788's Critique of Practical Reason (known
   as the second Critique) and 1797's Metaphysics of Morals. The 1790
   Critique of Judgment (the third Critique) applied the Kantian system to
   aesthetics and teleology. He also wrote a number of semi-popular essays
   on history, religion, politics and other topics. These works were well
   received by Kant's contemporaries and confirmed his preeminent status
   in eighteenth century philosophy. There were several journals devoted
   solely to defending and criticizing the Kantian philosophy. But despite
   his success, philosophical trends were moving in another direction.
   Many of Kant's most important disciples (including Reinhold, Beck and
   Fichte) transformed the Kantian position into increasingly radical
   forms of idealism. This marked the emergence of German Idealism. Kant
   was against these developments and publicly denounced Fichte in an open
   letter in 1799. It was one of his final philosophical acts. Kant's
   health, long poor, turned for the worse and he died in 1804. His
   unfinished final work, the fragmentary Opus Postumum, was (as its title
   suggests) published posthumously.

   A variety of popular beliefs have arisen concerning Kant's life. It is
   often held, for instance, that Kant was a late bloomer, that he only
   became an important philosopher in his mid-50s after rejecting his
   earlier views. While it is true that Kant wrote his greatest works
   relatively late in life, there is a tendency to underestimate the value
   of his earlier works. Recent Kant scholarship has devoted more
   attention to these "pre-critical" writings and has recognized a degree
   of continuity with his mature work.

   Many of the common myths concerning Kant's personal mannerisms are
   enumerated, explained, and refuted in Goldwaite's translator's
   introduction to Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and
   Sublime. It is often held that Kant lived a very strict and predictable
   life, leading to the oft-repeated story that neighbors would set their
   clocks by his daily walks. Again, this is only partly true. While still
   young, Kant was a very gregarious socialite and he remained fond of
   dinner parties through most of his life. He never married. Only later
   in his life, under the influence of his friend, the English merchant
   Joseph Green, did Kant adopt a more regulated lifestyle.

Kant's philosophy

   Kant defined the Enlightenment, in the essay " Answering the Question:
   What is Enlightenment?", as an age shaped by the motto, "Dare to know"
   (latin: Sapere aude). This involved thinking autonomously, free of the
   dictates of external authority. Kant's work served as a bridge between
   the Rationalist and Empiricist traditions of the 18th century. He had a
   decisive impact on the Romantic and German Idealist philosophies of the
   19th century. His work has also been a starting point for many 20th
   century philosophers.

   Kant asserted that "All the preparations of reason, therefore, in what
   may be called pure philosophy, are in reality directed to those three
   problems only (God, Soul, Freedom). These themselves, however, have a
   still further object, namely, to know what ought to be done, if the
   will is free, if there is a God, and if there is a future world. As
   this concerns our actions with reference to the highest aims of life,
   we see that the ultimate intention of nature in her wise provision was
   really, in the constitution of our reason, directed to moral interests
   only. " Critique of Pure Reason, A801. Kant meant that, because of the
   way that we think, no one could really know if there is a God and an
   afterlife. But, then again, no one could really know that there was not
   a God and an afterlife. For the sake of society and morality, Kant
   asserted, people are reasonably justified in believing in them, even
   though they could never know for sure whether they are real or not. The
   sense of an enlightened approach and the critical method required that
   "If one cannot prove that a thing is, he may try to prove that it is
   not. And if he succeeds in doing neither (as often occurs), he may
   still ask whether it is in his interest to accept one or the other of
   the alternatives hypothetically, from the theoretical or the practical
   point of view. … Hence the question no longer is as to whether
   perpetual peace is a real thing or not a real thing, or as to whether
   we may not be deceiving ourselves when we adopt the former alternative,
   but we must act on the supposition of its being real." (The Science of
   Right, Conclusion). The presupposition of God, soul, and freedom was
   then a practical concern, for "Morality, by itself, constitutes a
   system, but happiness does not, unless it is distributed in exact
   proportion to morality. This, however, is possible in an intelligible
   world only under a wise author and ruler. Reason compels us to admit
   such a ruler, together with life in such a world, which we must
   consider as future life, or else all moral laws are to be considered as
   idle dreams … ." (Critique of Pure Reason, A811).

   The two interconnected foundations of what Kant called his " critical
   philosophy" of the " Copernican revolution" which he claimed to have
   wrought in philosophy were his epistemology of Transcendental Idealism
   and his moral philosophy of the autonomy of practical reason. These
   placed the active, rational human subject at the centre of the
   cognitive and moral worlds. With regard to knowledge, Kant argued that
   the rational order of the world as known by science could never be
   accounted for merely by the fortuitous accumulation of sense
   perceptions. It was instead the product of the rule-based activity of
   "synthesis". This consisted of conceptual unification and integration
   carried out by the mind through concepts or the "categories of the
   understanding" operating on the perceptual manifold within space and
   time, which are not concepts, but forms of sensibility that are a
   priori necessary conditions for any possible experience. Thus the
   objective order of nature and the causal necessity that operates within
   it are dependent upon the mind. There is wide disagreement among Kant
   scholars on the correct interpretation of this train of thought. The
   'two-world' interpretation regards Kant's position as a statement of
   epistemological limitation, that we are never able to transcend the
   bounds of our own mind, meaning that we cannot access the "
   thing-in-itself". Kant however also speaks of the thing in itself or
   transcendental object as a product of the (human) understanding as it
   attempts to conceive of objects in abstraction from the conditions of
   sensibility. Following this thought, interpreters have argued that the
   thing in itself does not represent a separate ontological domain but
   simply a way of considering objects by means of the understanding
   alone. With regard to morality, Kant argued that the source of the good
   lies not in anything outside the human subject, either in nature or
   given by God, but rather only the good will itself. A good will is one
   that acts from duty in accordance with the universal moral law that the
   autonomous human being freely gives itself. This law obliges one to
   treat humanity — understood as rational agency, and represented through
   oneself as well as others — as an end in itself rather than (merely) as
   means.

   These ideas have largely framed or influenced all subsequent
   philosophical discussion and analysis. The specifics of Kant's account
   generated immediate and lasting controversy. Nevertheless, his thesis
   that the mind itself necessarily makes a constitutive contribution to
   its knowledge, that this contribution is transcendental rather than
   psychological, that morality is rooted in human freedom and acting
   autonomously is to act according to rational moral principles, and that
   philosophy involves self-critical activity, have had a lasting effect
   on subsequent philosophy.

Moral philosophy

   Immanuel Kant
   Enlarge
   Immanuel Kant

   Kant developed his moral philosophy in three works: Groundwork of the
   Metaphysic of Morals (1785), Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and
   Metaphysics of Morals (1797).

   The three works proceed by a method of taking the rational (obvious,
   and everyday) knowledge of the moral to the philosophical (knowledge of
   the moral) in the Groundwork. The latter works followed a method of
   using "practical reason", which is based only upon things about which
   reason can tell us, and not deriving any principles from experience, to
   reach conclusions which are able to be applied to the world of
   experience (in the second part of The Metaphysic of Morals).

   Kant is known for his theory that there is a single moral obligation,
   which he called the " Categorical Imperative", and is derived from the
   concept of duty. It is from the Categorical Imperative that all other
   moral obligations are generated, and by which all moral obligations can
   be tested (421). He believed that the moral law is a principle of
   reason itself, and is not based on contingent facts about the world,
   such as what would make us happy, but to act upon the moral law which
   has no other motive than "worthiness of being happy" (Critique of Pure
   Reason, A806/B834). Accordingly, he believed that moral obligation
   applies to all and only rational agents (408).

   A categorical imperative is an unconditional obligation; that is, it
   has the force of an obligation regardless of our will or desires
   (Contrast this with hypothetical imperative) (420-421). In Groundwork
   of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785) Kant enumerated three formulations
   of the categorical imperative which he believed to be roughly
   equivalent (436):

The first formulation

   The first formulation (Formula of Universal Law) of the moral
   imperative "requires that the maxims be chosen as though they should
   hold as universal laws of nature" (436). This formulation in principle
   has as its supreme law "Always act according to that maxim whose
   universality as a law you can at the same time will", and is the "only
   condition under which a will can never come into conflict with
   itself..." (437)

   One interpretation of the first formulation is called the
   "universalizability test." An agent's maxim, according to Kant, is his
   "subjective principle of human actions" — that is, what the agent
   believes is his reason to act (400, 429). The universalizability test
   has five steps:
    1. Find the agent's maxim. The maxim is an action paired with its
       motivation. Example: "I will lie for personal benefit." Lying is
       the action, the motivation is to get what you desire. Paired
       together they form the maxim.
    2. Imagine a possible world in which everyone in a similar position to
       the real-world agent followed that maxim.
    3. Decide whether any contradictions or irrationalities arise in the
       possible world as a result of following the maxim.
    4. If a contradiction or irrationality arises, acting on that maxim is
       not allowed in the real world.
    5. If there is no contradiction, then acting on that maxim is
       permissible, and in some instances required.

   (For a modern parallel, see John Rawls' hypothetical situation, the
   original position.)

The second formulation

   The second formulation (Formula of Humanity) "says that the rational
   being, as by its nature as an end and thus as an end in itself, must
   serve in every maxim as the condition restricting all merely relative
   and arbitrary ends." (436) The principle is "Act with reference to
   every rational being (whether yourself or another) so that it is an end
   in itself in your maxim...", meaning the rational being is "the basis
   of all maxims of action" and "must be treated never as a mere means but
   as the supreme limiting condition in the use of all means, i.e., as an
   end at the same time." (437-438)

The third formulation

   The third formulation (Formula of Autonomy) is a synthesis of the first
   two and is the basis for the "complete determination of all maxims". It
   says "that all maxims which stem from autonomous legislation ought to
   harmonize with a possible realm of ends as with a realm of nature"
   (436). In principle, "So act as if your maxims should serve at the same
   time as the universal law (of all rational beings)", meaning that we
   should so act that we may think of ourselves as "a member in the
   universal realm of ends", legislating universal laws through our
   maxims, in a "possible realm of ends" (438-439). (See also Kingdom of
   Ends)

Idea of God

   Kant stated the practical necessity for a belief in God in his Critique
   of Pure Reason. As an idea of pure reason, "we do not have the
   slightest ground to assume in an absolute manner...the object of this
   idea..." (A685/B713), but adds that the idea of God cannot be separated
   from the relation of happiness with morality as the "ideal of the
   supreme good". The foundation of this connection is an intelligible
   moral world, and "is necessary from the practical point of view"
   (A810/B838). Later, in the Logic, § 3 (1800) argued that the idea of
   God can only be proved through the moral law and only with practical
   intent, that is, "the intent so as to act as if there be a God" (trans.
   Hartmann and Schwartz). See Argument from morality for more details.

Idea of Freedom

   In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant distinguishes between the
   transcendental idea of freedom, which as a psychological concept is
   "mainly empirical" and refers to "the question whether we must admit a
   power of spontaneously beginning a series of successive things or
   states" as a real ground of necessity in regard to causality
   (A448/B476), and the practical concept of freedom as the independence
   of our will from the "coercion" or "necessitation through sensuous
   impulses". Kant finds it a source of difficulty that the practical
   concept of freedom is founded on the transcendental idea of freedom
   (A534/B562), but for the sake of practical interests uses the practical
   meaning, taking "no account of...its transcendental meaning", which he
   feels was properly "disposed of" in the Third Antinomy, and as an
   element in the question of the freedom of the will is for philosophy "a
   real stumbling-block" that has "embarrassed speculative reason"
   (A448/B476).

   Kant calls practical "everything that is possible through freedom", and
   the pure practical laws that are never given through sensuous
   conditions but are associated with either the cause or effect of our
   volition are moral laws. Reason can give us only the "pragmatic laws of
   free action through the senses", but pure practical laws are given by
   reason a priori, and "if the will is free", and "if there is a God",
   dictate "what ought to be done" (A800-802/B828-830).

Aesthetic philosophy

   Kant discusses the subjective nature of aesthetic qualities and
   experiences in Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and
   Sublime, (1764). Kant's contribution to aesthetic theory is developed
   in the Critique of Judgment (1790) where he investigates the
   possibility and logical status of "judgments of taste". In the
   "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment", the first major division of the
   Critique of Judgment, Kant used the term "aesthetic" in a manner that
   is, according to Kant scholar W.H. Walsh, its modern sense. Prior to
   this, in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant had, in order to note the
   essential differences between judgments of taste, moral judgments, and
   scientific judgments, abandoned use of the term "aesthetic" as
   "designating the critique of taste", noting that judgments of taste
   could never be "directed" by "laws a priori" (A22/B36). After A. G.
   Baumgarten, who wrote Aesthetica (1750-58), Kant was one of the first
   philosophers to develop and integrate aesthetic theory into a unified
   and comprehensive philosophical system, utilizing ideas that played an
   integral role throughout his philosophy.

   In the chapter "Analytic of the Beautiful" of the Critique of Judgment,
   Kant states that beauty is not a property of an artwork or natural
   phenomenon, but is instead a consciousness of the pleasure which
   attends the 'free-play' of the imagination and the understanding . Even
   though it appears that we are using reason to decide that which is
   beautiful, the judgment is not a cognitive judgment, "and is
   consequently not logical, but aesthetical" (§ 1). A pure judgement of
   taste is in fact subjective insofar as it refers to the emotional
   response of the subject and is based upon nothing but esteem for an
   object itself: it is a disinterested pleasure, and we feel that pure
   judgements of taste, i.e. judgements of beauty, lay claim to universal
   validity (§§20 - 22). It is important to note that this universal
   validity is not derived from a determinate concept of beauty but from
   common sense. Kant also believed that a judgement of taste shares
   characteristics engaged in a moral judgement: both are disinterested,
   and we hold them to be universal. In the chapter "Analytic of the
   Sublime" Kant identifies the sublime as an aesthetic quality which,
   like beauty, is subjective, but unlike beauty refers to an
   indeterminate relationship between the faculties of the imagination and
   of reason, and shares the character of moral judgments in the use of
   reason. The feeling of the sublime, itself comprised of two distinct
   modes (the mathematical sublime and the dynamical sublime), describe
   two subjective moments both of which concern the relationship of the
   faculty of the imagination to reason. The mathematical sublime is
   situated in the failure of the imagination to comprehend natural
   objects which appear boundlessness and formlessness, or which appear
   "absolutely great" (§ 23-25). This imaginative failure is then
   recuperated through the pleasure taken in reason's assertion of the
   concept of infinity. In this move the faculty of reason proves itself
   superior to our fallible sensible self (§§ 25-26). In the dynamical
   sublime there is the sense of annihilation of the sensible self as the
   imagination tries to comprehend a vast might. This power of nature
   threatens us but through the resistance of reason to such senible
   annihilation, the subject feels a pleasure and a sense of the human
   moral vocation. This appreciation of moral feeling through exposure to
   the sublime helps to develop moral character.

   Kant had developed the distinction between an object of art as a
   material value subject to the conventions of society and the
   transcendental condition of the judgment of taste as a "refined" value
   in the propositions of his Idea of A Universal History (1784). In the
   Fourth and Fifth Theses of that work he identified all art as the
   "fruits of unsociableness" due to men's "antagonism in society", and in
   the Seventh Thesis asserted that while such material property is
   indicative of a civilized state, only the ideal of morality and the
   universalization of refined value through the improvement of the mind
   of man "belongs to culture".

Political philosophy

   In Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795) Kant listed several
   conditions that he thought necessary for ending wars and creating a
   lasting peace. They included a world of constitutional republics. This
   was the first version of the democratic peace theory.

   He opposed "democracy", which at his time meant direct democracy,
   believing that majority rule posed a threat to individual liberty. He
   stated, "...democracy is, properly speaking, necessarily a despotism,
   because it establishes an executive power in which "all" decide for or
   even against one who does not agree; that is, "all", who are not quite
   all, decide, and this is a contradiction of the general will with
   itself and with freedom."

Influence

   Statue of Immanuel Kant in Kaliningrad, Russia
   Enlarge
   Statue of Immanuel Kant in Kaliningrad, Russia

   Kant's philosophy had an enormous influence on Western thought. During
   his own life, there was a considerable amount of attention paid to his
   thought, much of it critical, though he did have a positive influence
   on Reinhold, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Novalis during the 1780s and
   1790s. The philosophical movement known as German Idealism developed
   from Kant's theoretical and practical writings. The German Idealists
   Fichte and Schelling, for example, attempted to bring traditionally
   "metaphysically" laden notions like "the Absolute", "God", or "Being"
   with the confines of Kant's critical philosophy.

   Hegel was one of the first major critics of Kant's philosophy. Hegel
   thought Kant's moral philosophy was too formal, abstract and
   ahistorical. In response to Kant's abstract and formal account of
   morality, Hegel developed an ethics that considered the "ethical life"
   of the community.

   Arthur Schopenhauer was strongly influenced by Kant's transcendental
   idealism. He, like G. E. Schulze, Jacobi and Fichte before him, was
   critical of Kant's theory of the thing in itself. Things in themselves,
   they argued, are neither the cause of our representations nor are they
   something completely beyond our access. For Schopenhauer things in
   themselves do not exist independently of the non-rational will. The
   world, as Schopenhauer would have it, is the striving and largely
   unconscious will.

   With the success and wide influence of Hegel's writings, Kant's
   influence began to wane, though there was in Germany a brief movement
   that hailed a return to Kant in the 1860s, beginning with the
   publication of Kant und die Epigonen in 1865 by Otto Liebmann, whose
   motto was "Back to Kant". During the turn of the 20th century there was
   an important revival of Kant's theoretical philosophy, known as Marburg
   Neo-Kantianism, represented in the work of Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp,
   Ernst Cassirer, and anti-Neo-Kantian Nicolai Hartmann.

   Jurgen Habermas and John Rawls are two significant political and moral
   philosophers whose work is strongly influenced by Kant's moral
   philosophy. They both, regardless of recent relativist trends in
   philosophy, have argued that universality is essential to any viable
   moral philosophy.

   With his Perpetual Peace, Kant is considered to have foreshadowed many
   of the ideas that have come to form the democratic peace theory, one of
   the main controversies in political science.

   Kant's notion of "Critique" or criticism has been quite influential.
   The Early German Romantics, especially Friedrich Schlegel in his
   "Athenaeum Fragments", used Kant's self-reflexive conception of
   criticism in their Romantic theory of poetry. Also in Aesthetics,
   Clement Greenberg, in his classic essay "Modernist Painting", uses
   Kantian criticism, what Greenberg refers to as "immanent criticism", to
   justify the aims of Abstract painting, a movement Greenberg saw as
   aware of the key limitiaton—flatness—that makes up the medium of
   painting.

   Kant believed that mathematical truths were forms of synthetic a priori
   knowledge, which means they are necessary and universal, yet known
   through intuition. Kant’s often brief remarks about mathematics
   influenced the mathematical school known as intuitionism, a movement in
   philosophy of mathematics opposed to Hilbert’s formalism, and the
   logicism of Frege and Bertrand Russell.

   Post-Kantian philosophy has yet to return to the style of thinking and
   arguing that characterized much of philosophy and metaphysics before
   Kant, although many British and American philosophers have preferred to
   trace their intellectual origins to Hume, thus bypassing Kant. The
   British philosopher P. F. Strawson is a notable exception, as is the
   American philosopher Wilfrid Sellars.

   Due in part to the influence of Strawson and Sellars, among others,
   there has been a renewed interest in Kant's view of the mind. Central
   to many debates in philosophy of psychology and cognitive science is
   Kant's conception of the unity of consciousness.

Tomb

   The inscription upon Kant's tomb near the Kant Russian State
   University.
   Enlarge
   The inscription upon Kant's tomb near the Kant Russian State
   University.

   From 1873 to 1881, money was raised to build a monument chapel. His
   tomb and its pillared enclosure outside the Königsberg Cathedral in
   Kaliningrad, on the Pregolya (Pregel) River, are some of the few
   artifacts of German times preserved by the Soviets after they conquered
   the city in 1945. Kant's original tomb was demolished by Russian bombs
   early in that year. A replica of a statue of Kant that stood in front
   of the university was donated by a German entity in 1991 and placed on
   the original pediment. Newlyweds bring flowers to the chapel, as they
   formerly did for Lenin's monument. Near his tomb is the following
   inscription in German and Russian, taken from the "Conclusion" of his
   Critique of Practical Reason: "Two things fill the mind with ever new
   and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we
   reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within
   me."
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