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Immanuel Kant Biography

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Immanuel Kant was born Emmanuel in eastern Prussia into a poor family in 1724. His family had originally emigrated from Scotland where they spelled their last name Cant. Emmanuel’s family was quite large by today’s standards consisting of nine children, he was the fourth born and only one of four to make it to adulthood. He and his siblings grew up in a Pietist house, the focus of Pietism was the literal study of the bible. Their childhood was a strict and punitive one that stressed religious teachings over the sciences and mathematics. After learning Hebrew, Emmanuel changed his name to Immanuel. While attending the Collegium Fridericianum was a good student, Immanuel improved his studies and eventually enrolled at the University of Kongsberg by age 16 in 1740. It is there that he taught about the great philosophers Leibniz and Wolff by a rationalist Martin Knutzen. It is also here where Kant was exposed to the mathematical physics of Sir Isaac Newton. In 1746 Kant’s father died, he left the university to become a private tutor. Kant would eventually rejoin the university and spend the majority of …show more content…

Hume’, writings were the catalyst that allowed Kant to see things in a different light and inspiring him to write his “Critique of Pure Reason” in 1781, which has become known as the First Critique. In this book, Kant laid out the limits and scope of pure reason. This is where Kant explained the major differences with priori and posteriori knowledge. He also went on to define analytic and synthetic judgements. This book was very hard to read due to it using complex, confusing terminology and being a very dry topic. Kant tried to clear up confusion from his first book by writing a second shorter one titled “Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics” (1783), this one was easier to read and set the path for his view on metaphysics and

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