- Lived:
- 1724–1804 · Königsberg, East Prussia (today Kaliningrad, Russia)
- Tradition:
- German Enlightenment; the critical philosophy — the summit of this section of the book
- The Big Idea:
- The mind does not passively copy the world; it actively shapes everything we can experience. So we can know the world of appearances with certainty — and can never know reality as it is in itself. Inside that fenced-off world, one thing still speaks unconditionally: the moral law.
- In their words:
- "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me."
- If you remember one thing:
- Kant reversed the oldest assumption in philosophy — that knowledge must conform to objects — and argued instead that objects must conform to the structure of our minds. Everything since has been an argument with him.