INTRODUCTION TO IMMANUEL KANT

The name Immanuel Kant must be familiar to some people, a German philosopher with an idea that made a significant impact to Philosophy.

Immanuel Kant was born in Königsberg, near the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, which today has been renamed to Kaliningard, and became a part of Russia. Throughout his life, Kant has always been a persevering teacher, he taught Philosophy in University of Köningsberg.

His series of critiques was published in 1781, the infamous ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ or ‘Kritik der reinen Vernunft’. In his first critique, he was determine to give an understanding about metaphysics, by metaphysics he meant “the cognitions after which reason might strive independently of all experience”. His desire is to reach “the possibility or impossibility of metaphysics”.

When Kant wrote his critique, the context of the world was the end of Enlightenment. Back in 1780, the world saw a transitional decade where Enlightenment started to shifted decisively towards Romanticism. Enlightenment era was the uprising of modern science, marked by Newton’s achievements that made people see how human brain could explain the unexplainable without the need of God. Thus this era threatened to deteriorate the role of traditional moral and religious belief.

As one would conclude, the pride of Enlightenment lies in the power of human reason. Kant’s critique focuses on the metaphysics, where he wanted to show that a critique of reason by reason itself, unaided and unrestrained by traditional authorities, establishes a secure basis for both Science and Morality and Religion.

In Critique of Pure Reason, Kant deliver so many concepts that change one’s thinking to oneself, one of that being the critique of the Enlightenment.