Content-Type: text/html

# Immanuel Kant

HomePage | RecentChanges | Preferences
You can edit this page right now! It's a free, community project

1724-1804

Though he adopted the idea of a critical philosophy he had the range and ambition of the great system builders, pursuing the idea of the critique through studies of metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics.

The seminal book is The Critique of Pure Reason (1781), which proceeds from a remarkably simple thought experiment. Kant had wanted to discuss metaphysical systems but discovered "the scandal of philosophy"--you cannot decide what the proper terms for a metaphysical system are until you have defined the field, and you cannot define the field until you have defined the limit of the field of physics first. 'Physics' in this sense means, roughly, the discussion of the perceptible world.

So, he said, try to imagine something that exists in no time and has no extent in space. The human mind cannot produce such an idea--time and space are fundamental categories of consciousness. Nothing can be perceived except through these categories, and the limits of physics are the limits of the fundamental structure of the mind.

See also: Metaphysics, Philosophy, Ontology

HomePage | RecentChanges | Preferences
You can edit this page right now! It's a free, community project
Edit text of this page | View other revisions
Last edited July 6, 2001 2:03 pm (diff)
Search: