3. The Epistemology of Immanuel Kant

Infancy is the inability to use one's reason without the guidance of another. It is self-­imposed, when it depends on a deficiency, not of reason, but of the resolve and courage to use it without external guidance. Thus the watchword of the enlightenment is: Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own reason. —Immanuel Kant, ‘Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?’ [p 102] [p 103] Kant's metaphysics Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) is generally regarded as the last and greatest of the Enlightenment philosophers. The book that made him famous is his Critique of Pure Reason, first published in 1781, with a second revised edition in 1787.84 Paul Guyer and Allen Wood in their edition of the Critique say of it that it is one of the seminal and monumental works in the history of Western philosophy. . . . In the more than two centuries since the book was first published, it has been the constant object of scholarly interpretation and a continuous source of inspiration to inventive philosophers. To tell the whole story of the book's influence would be to write the history of philosophy since Kant. To feel the pulse-beat of this philosopher we could do no better than to read again his summa...