Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and 'What Is Enlightenment?'
- Date
- 1781 (Critique) / 1784 (essay)
- Category
- Culture, arts & philosophy
- Region
- Prussia (Königsberg)
- Era
- Early Modern
- Significance
In 1781 Immanuel Kant published the Critique of Pure Reason, a monumental attempt to reconcile empiricism and rationalism by arguing that the mind actively structures experience through innate categories, setting limits to what reason can know.
In 1784 he answered a public debate with the short essay 'An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?', defining Enlightenment as humanity's emergence from self-imposed immaturity and urging people to 'dare to know' and think for themselves under the motto sapere aude. Together the works gave the age its most rigorous philosophical foundation and its most famous self-definition. Kant's critical philosophy reshaped Western metaphysics, ethics and political thought, marking both a culmination of the Enlightenment and the threshold of modern philosophy.
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Empires active in 1781 (Critique) / 1784 (essay)
- Qing Dynasty1636 CE – 1912 CE
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Russian Empire1721 CE – 1917 CE
- Spanish Empire1492 CE – 1976 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
- Mughal Empire1526 CE – 1857 CE
Related culture, arts & philosophy events
- The Enlightenment (Age of Reason)c. 1685–1815
- Locke's Two Treatises and Essay: social contract and empiricism1689 (published; dated 1690)
- Thomas Paine's Common Sense popularises the case for independence10 January 1776
- Rousseau's The Social Contract and ÉmileApril–May 1762
- Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie1751–1772 (first 17 text vols. + plates)
- Voltaire's Lettres philosophiques popularises English liberty1733 (English) / 1734 (French)
Further reading
The wider story
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