Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant (April 22, 1724 – February 12, 1804) was a German philosopher and scientist (astrophysics, mathematics, geography, anthropology) from East Prussia, generally regarded as one of Western society's and modern Europe's most influential thinkers and the last major philosopher of the Enlightenment. Kant defined the Enlightenment, in the essay "", as an age shaped by the motto, "Dare to know". 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.

References and Further reading

Any suggestion of further reading on Kant has to take cognizance of the fact that his work has dominated philosophy like no other figure after him. Nevertheless, several guideposts can be made out. In Germany, the most important contemporary interpreter of Kant and the movement of German Idealism which he began is Dieter Henrich, who has some work available in English. P.F. Strawson's "The Bounds of Sense" (1969) largely determined the contemporary reception of Kant in England and America, but his positions have been challenged by a number of recent thinkers including Henry Allison, Paul Guyer, Robert Pippin, Terry Pinkard, and Béatrice Longuenesse. This body of work has begun to lessen the divide between academic interpretations of Kant in the English speaking world and in Europe. John Rawls' Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, is particularly useful in its investigation of Kant's moral philosophy within the vicissitudes of ethical systems from Hume to Leibniz to Hegel. More recently, Gary Banham has published a key interpretation of Kant's practical philosophy that has corrected exclusive focus on the categorical imperative in favour of an inclusive comprehension of right and virtue. John McDowell is perhaps the most important contemporary analytic philosopher who explicitly builds upon Kantian themes. Howard Caygill's dictionary of Kantian terms is an excellent guide to the overall terrain of the influence and nature of Kant's concepts.

Related Topics:
Hume - Leibniz - Hegel

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• Allison, Henry. Kant?s Transcendental Idealism. Yale University Press, 2004.
• Banham, Gary. Kant's Practical Philosophy: From Critique to Doctrine Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
• Broad C. D. Kant: An Introduction CUP 1978.
• Caygill, Howard. A Kant Dictionary Blackwell, 1995.
• Gram, Moltke S. The Transcendental Turn: The Foundation of Kant's Idealism. Gainesville : University Presses of Florida, 1984. ISBN 0813007879
• Guyer, Paul. The Cambridge Companion to Kant. Cambridge University Press, 1992
• Henrich, Dieter. The Unity of Reason: Essays on Kant?s Philosophy. Harvard University Press, 1994.
• Kuehn, Manfred. Kant: A Biography. Cambridge University Press, 2001.
• Korsgaard, Christine. Creating the Kingdom of Ends. Cambridge, 1996.
• Longuenesse, Béatrice. Kant and the Capacity to Judge. Princeton University Press, 1998.
• McDowell, John. Mind and World. Harvard University Press, 1994.
• Mohanty, J.N. and Robert W. Shahan. eds. Essays on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, 1982. ISBN 0806117826
• Pippin, Robert. Idealism as Modernism. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
• Pinkard, Terry. German philosophy, 1760-1860: The Legacy of Idealism. Cambridge, 2002.
• Proceedings of the International Kant Congresses. Several Congresses (numbered) edited by various publishers are also available.
• Rawls, John. Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy. Cambridge, 2000.
• Strawson, P.F. The Bounds of Sense: an essay on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Routledge, 1989.
• Brigitte Sassen (2000), ed., Kant's Early Critics: The Empiricist Critique of the Theoretical Philosophy
• Robert Paul Wolff, Kant's theory of mental activity: A commentary on the transcendental analytic of the Critique of pure reason (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963)
• Robert Paul Wolff, The Autonomy of Reason: A Commentary on Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (New York: HarperCollins, 1974). ISBN 0061317926