Immanuel Kant - The Thing-in-Itself

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was so routine-oriented that his neighbors in Königsberg set their clocks by his daily walks. But inside his head, he was revolutionizing how we understand reality.

David Hume (an Empiricist) argued that we can't truly know anything about cause and effect. We just see one billiard ball hit another; we don't see the "force" transferring. This threatened to destroy science.

Kant woke up from his "dogmatic slumber" to fix this.

Kant flipped the script. Instead of asking "How does our mind conform to the world?", he asked "How does the world conform to our mind?"

• Transcendental Idealism: We don't experience the world directly. We experience it through the "glasses" of our mind (Space, Time, Causality).
• Phenomena: The world as we see it.
• Noumena: The "Thing-in-Itself" (Ding an sich). Reality as it actually is, which we can never access.

Kant didn't care about outcomes (Utilitarianism). He cared about Duty.

• Categorical Imperative: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law."
• Basically: Don't do it if you wouldn't want everyone to do it. No exceptions for yourself.

Kant built the bridge between Rationalism and Empiricism. He is the gatekeeper of modern philosophy. You basically have to go through him to get anywhere else.

1. The Book:

• "Critique of Pure Reason" (Summary).
• Don't try to read the original unless you want a headache. Read a good guide or summary first.

Next, we meet the man who took Kant's ideas and turned them into a history-spanning spirit: Hegel.