Three hundred years ago, a German philosopher was born who provided answers to the fundamental questions of existence: What can I know? What should I do? What can I hope for? What is a human being? This researcher of faith, knowledge, and morality equipped people with a new understanding of the essence of things, a foundation that remains relevant even three centuries later.
Moral Biography
Immanuel Kant came from a family of harness makers; his father and maternal grandfather earned their living crafting horse gear. On April 22, 1724, a son was born to a workshop owner on the outskirts of Königsberg, who was registered at birth as belonging to his father’s trade. The boy, with a biblical name meaning “God is with us” in Hebrew, inherited from Georg Kant the status of a guild craftsman. Life did not promise the son of a harness maker any bright prospects; those would come from his own thirst for knowledge. Even after becoming a respected scholar, this “commoner” did not enjoy the favor of the royal court. However, for the twice-elected rector of the University of Königsberg, there were far more important matters than formal recognition from kings.
“My parents, of the artisan class, were models of decency and respectability,” the thinker recalled. “Having left neither inheritance nor debts, they provided me with the best moral upbringing, for which I am very grateful.” After losing his mother at the age of 14 (Frau Regina passed away prematurely at 40), a caring and devout woman who instilled in him the “first seed of goodness,” the future philosopher achieved success through his own efforts. The principles of Immanuel Kant are best captured in his striking quotes: “One must live primarily for work”; “It is a person’s duty to uphold their own dignity”; “Two things fill the soul with wonder and reverence: the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.”
Kant in a painting by Johann Gottlieb Becker (1768)
The “Prussian Hermit”
A graduate of the “Latin School,” Kant continued his education at the theological faculty of the University of Königsberg, where he developed an interest in natural sciences, mathematics, and philosophy. After his father’s death, the family faced financial difficulties, forcing him to earn a living through tutoring, billiards, and even playing cards. For nine years, the university-educated specialist worked as a private tutor and served as an assistant librarian at the Königsberg palace library for 15 years while awaiting a professorship. Yet, the scholar’s personal modesty did not prevent him from writing the first version of Immanuel Kant’s biography during his lifetime. He began lecturing on logic and metaphysics at his alma mater in 1755 after defending three dissertations in two years.
The first dissertation opened the door for him to teach at his university, the second laid the groundwork for his title of Privatdozent, and the third granted him the right to become an extraordinary professor—a position he finally secured at the age of 46, after which he continued to work in the library for another two years. In 1786, when the world-renowned philosopher was entrusted with the rectorship, he was already 62 years old, and two years later, he was re-elected for a second term. Kant’s teaching principle was to “teach not knowledge, but reflection.” The thinker never traveled beyond his small homeland, earning him the nickname “Prussian hermit” from his contemporaries. Without changing his place of residence, Kant managed to be a citizen of two empires: after the Baltic city changed hands to another monarchy, the German thinker was a Russian subject from 1757 to 1762.
An image of the University of Königsberg on a 19th-century postcard
Interesting Facts
Immanuel Kant was considered a stickler for detail, an ascetic, a pedant, and a literalist. He was put off by toothless interlocutors and untidy students. Violations of rules and traditions threatened the philosopher’s mental comfort and could provoke a heart attack (a conflict with an arrogant servant once escalated to such an outcome). Kant referred to beer as “food of poor taste” and preferred wine. A lifelong bachelor, he never married or had children, but he did not deny himself the pleasure of admiring female beauty. After going blind in his old age in one eye, he would always sit next to an attractive young woman at dinner parties, asking her to position herself to his right. The number of dining companions in the philosopher’s home had to be “no fewer than the number of Graces and no more than the number of Muses.” His ritualized actions and the strict schedule he devised were Kant’s attempts to help himself instead of relying on “ineffectual doctors” who could not manage his poor health.
Among the peculiarities of the philosopher’s psyche were hypochondria and melancholy, which manifested as a systemic pathology in his personality. While Kant usually shared meals with company, he always took solitary walks along his established “philosophical route,” fearing illness from cold air entering his lungs during conversations. From childhood, he exhibited a tendency toward anxiety, finding symptoms of various ailments he learned about from medical literature. Some researchers even consider the author of the phrase “Dare to use your own reason” to have suffered from schizophrenia. His worries over imagined ailments did not prevent Kant from living to an old age. He passed away at nearly 80 years old on February 12, 1804. The farewell of the townspeople to their illustrious compatriot, who left his relatives 20,000 guilders, stretched over two weeks.
The painting “Kant Among Friends,” by Émile Derstling
Worldview Revolution
If bipolar disorder indeed existed, it would highlight a paradox: the idealism of the Enlightenment thinker is recognized as one of the greatest intellectual transformations ever to occur in humanity. The contribution of the founder of German classical philosophy to the theory of knowledge and metaphysics is compared to a paradigm shift in the understanding of the universe. In the evolution of worldviews, Immanuel Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” stands alongside Nicolaus Copernicus’s “Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres.” For the advancement of humanity, the works of the founder of classical idealism and the creator of the heliocentric system of the universe are milestones of equal importance.
To summarize Kant’s philosophy, we can distill his conclusions into this essence: the thinker of the modern era regarded reason as the source of morality, and his doctrine as a compromise between rational and sensory knowledge. The main ideas of Immanuel Kant are recorded in the field of epistemology (from the Greek episteme – “knowledge,” logos – “study”). The scholar explored knowledge as a scientific category: his philosophical system was built on examining the origins, limits, and laws of cognitive activity. In two distinct periods of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy—pre-critical and critical—the German scholar engaged with various disciplines and issues: he transitioned from natural sciences and natural philosophy to contemplating freedom and morality. Throughout his life, his studies encompassed history, law, astronomy, and religion, in addition to ethics, aesthetics, and political theory (the philosopher provided grounds to consider himself both a theologian and an agnostic).
Perpetual Peace
Here are how relevant themes of war, freedom, and rights are reflected in the quotes of Immanuel Kant: “The highest moral good cannot be achieved through the moral improvement of an individual—it requires a system of people united as a whole”; “The greatest evils of cultured nations are not the consequences of destructive wars, but the constant preparations for them—such a future robs states of the fruits of civilization and the resources that could serve their development”; “While freedom is being severely attacked in many places, and the increasing demands on citizens are justified by security considerations, people must have the right to openly express disagreement with state regulations that they perceive as unjust toward society”; “The freedom of the printed word is the only sacred safeguard of the rights of the people.”
Believing that injustice is the root cause of military conflicts, the author of the imperative “Do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself” taught humanity moral improvement and opposed the “right of the strong” in relations between countries. In his later years, the proponent of scientific racism (for which he faced criticism from contemporaries) condemned European colonialism and rejected racial hierarchies. The man who referred to space and time as “forms of intuition” and “objects of experience” envisioned the culmination of world history in “perpetual peace,” which would be achieved through an equal union of nations (international cooperation) and universal democracy. “Of course, perpetual peace as the ultimate goal of international law is a utopian idea,” the scholar reflected, “but the political principles that would allow us to bring it closer are entirely feasible.”