Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804) Essay -- Essays Papers

Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804)Author of Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785). The Enlightenment was a desire for human affairs to be guided by rationality than by faith, superstition, or revelation a belief in the power of human rationality to change hunting lodge and liberate the individual from the restraints of custom or arbitrary authority all backed up by a world view increasingly clear by science rather than by religion or tradition. (Outram 1995)In the eighteenth degree Celsius, people started questioning the authority and knowledge of the church. New ideas placing human reason over faith and blind obedience began arising. This period in history is known as the Enlightenment. It is a movement, still in progress, for individual people to scope and hopefully grasp their highest potential. It began with the writings of philosophers such as Voltaire (1694-1778) and Charles-Louis Montesquieu (1689-1755). The second wave included Denis Diderot (1713-78), dAlem bert (1714-80), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78), and the final stretch came from thinkers such as Lessing and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). All three eras emphasized intellectual reason over faith and put more reliance on scientific discoveries and revelations. However, the people in the third part, especially Immanuel Kant, having the benefit of hindsight, atomic number 18 able to encompass the movement from faith to reason in their writings. The basic details of Kants biographic life take very little space. He was born(p) in 1724 in Konigsberg, the capital of East Prussia and one of Frederick the Greats garrison towns. Kant knew what it was like to bear as a peasant, since he came from a peasant family. His father was a harness maker. From an early age, Kant showed much intellectual potential and his local fame gained him admittance into a school called the Collegium Fredericianum, an institution run by Pietists. Pietism was an eighteenth century fundamentalist movemen t within German Protestantism, also followed by his parents, that minimized the authority of the church and stressed individual moral conduct (Sullivan 1994). Then, he accompanied the University of Konigsberg, also staffed mainly by Pietists. The influence of this religious background is reflected in Kants beliefs in the existence of God, in the dignity of each person, and in a everyday moral code. Kant spen... ...e believes that it is still going on. The time of Enlightenment is not over yet we still presently are in it today. He says If it is asked now whether we live at present in an Enlightened age, the answer is No, but we do live in an age of Enlightenment (Velkley 1989). Immanuel Kant Links University of are Link University of Arkansas Link Kant Homepage Link Kant Homepage Works Cited - Acton, H.B., Kants Moral Philosophy, published by Macmillan and Co., Copyright 1970. - Buchdahl, Gerd, Kant and the Dynamics of R eason, published by Blackwell Publishers, Copyright 1992. - Deleuze, Gilles, Kants Critical Philosophy, published by The University of manganese Press, Copyright 1983. - Sullivan, Roger J., An Introduction to Kants Ethics, published by Cambridge University Press, Copyright 1994. - Velkley, Richard L., Freedom and the End of Reason, published by The University of Chicago, Copyright 1989. - Wood, Allen W., Kants Rational Theology, published by Cornell University Press, Copyright 1978.