69 Quotes About Kant

When Friedrich Nietzsche mocked Immanuel Kant for having "discovered a moral faculty in man", he inadvertently resolved Kant's dilemma of being unable to identify what exactly constituted his "moral law" for fear of offending against a charge of empiricism from the likes of David Hume.

Immanuel Kant, un uomo lontanissimo dall'irrazionalismo, osservò una volta che "dal legno storto dell'umanità non si è mai cavata una cosa diritta". È questo il motivo per cui nessuna soluzione perfetta è possibile nelle cose umane - non già soltanto in pratica, ma in linea di principio - e ogni serio tentativo di metterla in atto è destinato con ogni probabilità a produrre sofferenza, delusione e fallimento.

Kant’s conception of dignity is indebted to Cicero and the Roman conception of dignitas, according to which dignity is an elevated position or rank. The Roman dignitas is a complicated notion that has further connotations, e.g. worthiness, duties and privileges. Many of these are reflected in present-day usage, as when one speaks of a ‘dignitary’ or behaving with dignity. However, the additional connotations are not essential to dignitas.

Hegel was an advocate of panlogism: reason is literally everywhere. Existence is made of reason, hence existence is entirely knowable. Reality is constituted by the mind and is its construction. Given that mind can know everything it made, there is no unknowable, noumenal world. If mind creates everything, there is nothing outside mind, no noumenal objects existing independently of mind.

[Dostoyevsky] eloquently proves that heartless ideas are often a source of immorality: they bring with them destructiveness, hatred, cynicism, and misanthropy. The novelist also carefully examines moral indifference and corruption which leads him to the questions: “What if reason takes the side of evil?” “What if evil is done for the sake of Good?

What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?

Kant ist über dieses äußerliche Verhältnis des Verstandes als des Vermögens der Begriffe und des Begriffes selbst zum Ich hinausgegangen. Es gehört zu den tiefsten und richtigsten Einsichten, die sich in der Kritik der Vernunft finden, daß die Einheit, die das Wesen des Begriffs ausmacht, als die ursprünglich-synthetische Einheit der Apperzeption, als Einheit des »Ich denke« oder des Selbstbewußtseins erkannt wird

Innocence is indeed a glorious thing, only, on the other hand, it is very sad that it cannot well maintain itself, and is easily seduced.

....Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination, resting solely on empirical grounds, and it is vain to expect that these should define an action by which one could attain the totality of a series of consequences which is really endless.