Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) is one of the central figures in modern philosophy. He synthesized early modern rationalism and empiricism, set the terms for much of nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy, and continues to exercise a significant influence today in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, and other fields. The fundamental idea of Kant’s “critical philosophy” is human autonomy. He argues that the human understanding is the source of the general laws of nature that structure all our experience; and that human reason gives itself the moral law, which is our basis for belief in God, freedom, and immortality. Therefore, scientific knowledge, morality, and religious belief are mutually consistent and secure because they all rest on the same foundation of human autonomy, which is also the final end of nature according to the teleological worldview of reflecting judgment that Kant introduces to unify the theoretical and practical parts of his philosophical system. Kant was one of the foremost thinkers of the Enlightenment and arguably one of the greatest philosophers of all time. In him were subsumed new trends that had begun with the rationalism (stressing reason) of René Descartes and the empiricism (stressing experience) of Francis Bacon. He thus inaugurated a new era in the development of philosophical thought.
Image source:
Becker. (1768). Immanuel Kant. Retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kant_foto.jpg
Biography sources:
Michael Rohlf. (2018). Immanuel Kant. In Edward N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/kant/
Immanuel Kant. (2018, September 20). [Online Encyclopædia]. Retrieved October 31, 2018, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Immanuel-Kant
Kant's Critique of Pure Reason by 
Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals by 
