Immanuel Kant Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ===Publication of ''The Critique of Pure Reason''=== {{Main|Critique of Pure Reason}} At age 46, Kant was an established scholar and an increasingly influential philosopher, and much was expected of him. In correspondence with his ex-student and friend [[Markus Herz]], Kant admitted that, in the inaugural dissertation, he had failed to account for the relation between our sensible and intellectual faculties.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Watkins|first=Erik|title=Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: Background Source Materials|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2009|isbn=978-0-521-78162-6|location=Cambridge, UK|pages=276}}</ref> He needed to explain how we combine what is known as sensory knowledge with the other type of knowledge—that is, reasoned knowledge—these two being related but having very different processes. [[File:Painting of David Hume.jpg|thumb|Portrait of philosopher [[David Hume]]]] Kant also credited [[David Hume]] with awakening him from a "dogmatic slumber" in which he had unquestioningly accepted the tenets of both religion and [[natural philosophy]].<ref name="Smith-1952">{{cite book|last=Smith|first=Homer W.|url=https://archive.org/details/manhisgods00smit|title=Man and His Gods|publisher=[[Grosset & Dunlap]]|year=1952|location=New York|page=[https://archive.org/details/manhisgods00smit/page/404 404]|author-link=Homer W. Smith|url-access=registration}}</ref><ref>Kant, ''PFM'' 4:260</ref> Hume, in his 1739 ''[[Treatise on Human Nature]]'', had argued that we only know the mind through a subjective, essentially illusory series of perceptions. Ideas such as [[causality]], [[morality]], and [[Object (philosophy)|objects]] are not evident in experience, so their reality may be questioned. Kant felt that reason could remove this skepticism, and he set himself to solving these problems. Although fond of company and conversation with others, Kant isolated himself, and resisted friends' attempts to bring him out of his isolation.{{efn|It has been noted that in 1778, in response to one of these offers by a former pupil, Kant wrote, "Any change makes me apprehensive, even if it offers the greatest promise of improving my condition, and I am persuaded by this natural instinct of mine that I must take heed if I wish that the threads which the Fates spin so thin and weak in my case to be spun to any length. My great thanks, to my well-wishers and friends, who think so kindly of me as to undertake my welfare, but at the same time a most humble request to protect me in my current condition from any disturbance."<ref>Christopher Kul-Want and Andrzej Klimowski, ''Introducing Kant'' (Cambridge: Icon Books, 2005).{{page needed|date=October 2011}} {{ISBN|978-1-84046-664-5}}</ref>}} When Kant emerged from his silence in 1781, the result was the ''Critique of Pure Reason''. Kant countered Hume's [[empiricism]] by claiming that some knowledge exists inherently in the mind, independent of experience.<ref name="Smith-1952" /> He drew a parallel to the [[Copernican Revolution#Immanuel Kant|Copernican revolution]] in his proposal that worldly objects can be intuited ''[[A priori and a posteriori|a priori]]'', and that [[Anschauung|intuition]] is consequently distinct from [[Objectivity (philosophy)|objective reality]]. He acquiesced to Hume somewhat by defining causality as a "regular, constant sequence of events in time, and nothing more".<ref>{{cite book|last=Smith|first=Homer W.|title=Man and His Gods|publisher=Grosset & Dunlap|year=1952|location=New York|page=[https://archive.org/details/manhisgods00smit/page/416 416]}}</ref> Although now recognized as one of the greatest works in the history of philosophy, the ''Critique'' disappointed Kant's readers upon its initial publication.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Dorrien|first=Gary|title=Kantian Reason and Hegelian Spirit: The Idealistic Logic of Modern Theology|publisher=John Wiley & Sons|year=2012|isbn=978-0-470-67331-7|location=Malden, MA|pages=37}}</ref> The book was long, over 800 pages in the original German edition, and written in a convoluted style. Kant was quite upset with its reception.{{sfn|Kuehn|2001|pp=250–254}} His former student, [[Johann Gottfried Herder]] criticized it for placing reason as an entity worthy of criticism instead of considering the process of reasoning within the context of language and one's entire personality.<ref>[[Frederick Copleston|Copleston, Frederick Charles]] (2003). ''The Enlightenment: Voltaire to Kant''. p. 146.</ref> Similar to [[Christian Garve]] and [[Johann Georg Heinrich Feder]], he rejected Kant's position that space and time possessed a form that could be analyzed. Additionally, Garve and Feder also faulted Kant's ''Critique'' for not explaining differences in perception of sensations.<ref>Sassen, Brigitte. ''Kant's Early Critics: The Empiricist Critique of the Theoretical Philosophy''. 2000.</ref> Its density made it, as Herder said in a letter to [[Johann Georg Hamann]], a "tough nut to crack", obscured by "all this heavy gossamer".<ref>''Ein Jahrhundert deutscher Literaturkritik'', vol. III, ''Der Aufstieg zur Klassik in der Kritik der Zeit'' (Berlin, 1959), p. 315; as quoted in Gulyga, Arsenij. ''Immanuel Kant: His Life and Thought''. Trans., Marijan Despaltović. Boston: Birkhäuser, 1987.</ref> Its reception stood in stark contrast to the praise Kant had received for earlier works, such as his ''Prize Essay'' and shorter works that preceded the first ''Critique''. Recognizing the need to clarify the original treatise, Kant wrote the ''[[Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics]]'' in 1783 as a summary of its main views. Shortly thereafter, Kant's friend Johann Friedrich Schultz (1739–1805), a professor of mathematics, published ''Explanations of Professor Kant's Critique of Pure Reason'' (Königsberg, 1784), which was a brief but very accurate commentary on Kant's ''Critique of Pure Reason''.{{sfn|Kuehn|2001|pp=268–269}} [[File:Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) engraving.jpg|thumb|left|Engraving of Immanuel Kant]] Kant's reputation gradually rose through the latter portion of the 1780s, sparked by a series of important works: the 1784 essay, "[[What is Enlightenment?|Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?]]"; 1785's ''[[Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals]]'' (his first work on moral philosophy); and, from 1786, ''[[Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science]]''. But Kant's fame ultimately arrived from an unexpected source. In 1786, [[Karl Leonhard Reinhold]] published a series of public letters on Kantian philosophy.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Guyer|first=Paul|title=The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2006|isbn=978-0-521-82303-6|location=Cambridge, UK|pages=631}}</ref> In these letters, Reinhold framed Kant's philosophy as a response to the central intellectual controversy of the era: the [[pantheism controversy]]. [[Friedrich Jacobi]] had accused the recently deceased [[Gotthold Ephraim Lessing]] (a distinguished dramatist and philosophical essayist) of [[Spinozism]]. Such a charge, tantamount to an accusation of atheism, was vigorously denied by Lessing's friend [[Moses Mendelssohn]], leading to a bitter public dispute among partisans. The [[scandal|controversy]] gradually escalated into a debate about the values of the Enlightenment and the value of reason. Reinhold maintained in his letters that Kant's ''Critique of Pure Reason'' could settle this dispute by defending the authority and bounds of reason. Reinhold's [[Letter (message)|letters]] were widely read and made Kant the most famous philosopher of his era. Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page