Blackwell Reference Online

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German Enlightenment philosopher. Kant spent his entire life in the East Prussian city of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad), where he studied and taught philosophy at the university. In spite of this unpromising provincial background, he produced a body of philosophical writings which have had an incalculable influence upon modern philosophy and C ritical theory . His work is conventionally divided into “precritical” and “critical” periods. In the writings of the first period between 1747 and 1780, including Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (1764) and On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World (1770), Kant developed an essayistic and unsystematic critique of the rationalism of the early German Enlightenment. In the second, “critical” period Kant systematized this critique in the critical trilogy Critique of Pure Reason (1781, second edition 1787), Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and Critique of Judgement ( 1790 ) on which his reputation now rests. In the “critical philosophy” Kant attempted to establish the sources and limits of legitimate theoretical, practical, and aesthetic J udgments . In doing so he criticized existing claims to legitimate judgments, describing his work as a contribution to “the age of criticism.” For him nothing was exempt from criticism or “the test of free and open examination;” neither religion nor ... log in or subscribe to read full text