Immanuel Kant is a German philosopher, who lived between 1724 and 1804.
He is best known for the three critiques that he wrote, in which he argued that human beings are not just able to think rationally, but they are also rational beings.
Kant was born in what is now known as East Prussia. He grew up in a relatively wealthy family with an intellectual background. His father was a saddler and harness maker.
Immanuel Kant attended school for twelve years before he attended the University of Königsberg’s Collegium Fridericianum from 1740 to 1746 for his bachelor’s degree.
He then moved on to attend the University of Jena until his studies there were interrupted by the Seven Years’ War.
In 1770, he finished his studies in philosophy and jurisprudence at the University of Erlangen and then left to Austria and France where he was imprisoned for a year in Marseille.
His brother was also a noted poet and philosopher.
- In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.
- Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.
- Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.
- Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end.
- By a lie, a man… annihilates his dignity as a man.
- He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.
- All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.
- Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.
- Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them.
- To be is to do.
