Kant, Immanuel
Born April 22, 1724, Kant was a German philosopher who is regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of Europe and the last major philosopher of the Enlightenment. Kant is best known for the concept of Transcendental Idealism. Within this framework, there exists a transcendant mind or “good” that that is responsible for structuring the world and for creating objects in the world, including human awareness. He argued that human beings know what they know through empirical observation (sensory-based knowledge) and also through intuitive knowledge (via their link with the transcendent good). We acquire knowledge through a synthesis of observation and conceptual unification and integration carried out by the mind using “categories of understanding” that exist a priori, inherited from the transcendent mind or “good.” Hence, the human mind makes a contribution to its own knowledge, a contribution that is transcendental rather than psychological.
