Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher who lived from 1724 to 1804. He was born into a poor family, but through good fortune was able to receive education in his childhood that enabled him to go onto university. His early academic career was quiet and varied. He studied and taught many subjects—math, geography, physics, and several more—before finally deciding that his true passion was with philosophy. Nonetheless, his peripheral academic studies certainly informed his later philosophy, especially his interest in Newtonian physics. Aside from a few relatively unimportant works, Kant did not publish anything until the "Critique of Pure Reason" in 1781 at the age of 57. Over the next two decades, however, he was extremely productive and was able to create an exceptionally large impact on philosophy despite the relatively short length of his writing career.

Kant's philosophy is, like any philosophy, a reaction to its...