Philosophy

Immanuel Kant

1724 to 1804, Konigsberg

Duty, reason, and the limits of what we can know.

Start learning Immanuel →

Lessons

The Copernican Revolution

Kant’s revolutionary insight that the mind does not passively receive reality but actively structures experience - so that we know the world only as it appears to us, shaped by the mind’s own forms.

The Categorical Imperative

Kant’s supreme principle of morality - that we must act only on principles we could will to be universal laws, and treat humanity always as an end, never merely as a means.

The Dignity of Persons

Kant’s profound idea that every human being has an intrinsic, inviolable worth - a dignity beyond all price - which became the philosophical foundation of modern human rights.

What Is Enlightenment?

Kant’s ringing call for intellectual maturity - ‘dare to know!’ - defining Enlightenment as humanity’s emergence from self-imposed immaturity into the courageous use of one’s own reason.

Freedom and the Moral Law

Kant’s profound reconciliation of freedom and determinism - and his argument that morality itself presupposes that we are free, autonomous beings who give the moral law to ourselves.

More in Philosophy

AristotlePlatoFriedrich NietzscheConfuciusSenecaEpictetusMarcus AureliusSocrates

epoché — a humanities education that remembers you.