KANT, IMMANUEL, the author of the Critical Philosophy,' and distinguished as well for the profundity of his views as for the extent sod variety of his researches, was born on tho 22nd of April 1721 at Konigsberg in Prussia, where he died on the 12th of February 1801. His native city, to which he was so attached that in a long life of nearly eighty years ho never left it long or for a great distance, was the scene of Kant's literary activity. Educated at its gymnasium, he removed in 1748 to its university to attend the classes of philosophy, mathematics, and theology. Upon the completion of his academical studies, Kant passed many years In the capacity of tutor, according to his own confession with little satisfaction to himself, since the desire of acquiring knowledge interfered with the duty of imparting it. In 1755 he passed to the degree of M.A., when he commenoed a aeries of private lectures on logio and metaphysics, physics and mathematics, which he continued to give for fifteen years, until he was invited in 1770 to fill the chair of the former science, which he held until 1791, when his declining strength compelled him to resign its arduous and laborious duties.
The skill and success with which Kant attacked, with his able and searching criticism, the specious but false pretensions of the existing philosophy, gained him the name of the "smasher," or the " destroyer " (der zermalmeode), from those who pretended that he was more skilful in destroying than in recoustruoting a system. At the time when Kant first entered directly into the arena of philosophy, its possession was disputed by a superficial eclectichnn and uncompro mising dogmatism on the one baud, and on the other by • bold unlimited doubt which was cherished by the refined and consequential scepticism of Ilume's writings. To put an end to this state of things, which was as dangerous to the truths of morality and religion as it was subversive of the legitimacy of knowledge, was the object of Kant's philosophical labours; and for this purpose he sought to expel both dogmatism and scepticism from the domain of philosophy.
Kant accordingly proceeded to an examination of man's cognitive faculty, in order to discover the laws and extent of its operation. This investigation he designated the criticism of the pure reason, and held that the reason, as a pure faculty, must criticise not only itself, but also, as the highest activity of the human intellect, the subordi nate faculties of seven and understanding. Kant understood by pure whatever is independent of experience, as opposed to the empirical, which rests upon it. The pure, or whatever in knowledge expresses the universal and necessary is d priori, that is, antecedent to expe rience; whereas all that is contingent or only comparatively general is d posteriori. The first requisite in philosophy is a science which may establish a possibility, and determine the principles and extent of such knowledge. Now it cannot be derived from experience,
which only shows an object to us such as it appears to be, without declaring that it must be such as it is. All attempts to derive the necessary from experience are unsuccessful, simply because they con tradict the consciousness which recognises an essential difference between necessary and contingent. Experience serves ouly as a stimulus to awaken the faculties of pure cognition, so that afterwards, by reflection nud abstraction (absonderung), we become specially conscious of them. As then we are undoubtedly in possession of such pure or a priori knowledge, of which it is impossible to place the origin in experience, it must have its root in the pure reason itself, which, on the other hand, cannot be the ground of the contin gent and empirical ; for the pure reason contains nothing but the formal or necessary principles of all knowledge, whereas the objects to which these principles refer are given to the mind from without. As an instance of these universal and necessary principles, Kant adduces the law of causation, the speculations of Hume upon which afforded the occasion of his philosophical investigations. He observes that the notion of a cause so manifestly implies the necessity of its being connected with some effect, and enforces so strongly the uni versality of this law, that it is totally inconsistent with the derivation of it from the repeated association of an effect with an antecedent. The next point which Kant notices in the Introduction to Critic of the Pure Reason,' as of great importance for the right appreciation of his philosophical system, is the distinction between analytical and synthetical judgments. The former are those in which the predicate is connected with the subject by identity ; the latter are devoid of all identity of the subject and predicate. Analytical judgments may he also termed explanatory, the synthetical extending (erweiteruog surtheile) judgments; since in the former the predicate adds nothing to the notion of the subject, and only resolves the notion which forms the subject into ita constituent and subordinate notions, which however involved are really contained in it, whereas in the latter a new element is added by the predicate to those already contained in the subject, which was not previously understood in it, and therefore would not result from it by any analysis. For iustance, the propo sition that all bodies are extended is analytical ; but the assertion that all bodies are heavy is synthetical. All the conclusions of experience are synthetical. Experience proves the possibility of the synthesis of the predicate "heavy," with the subject "body;" for these two notions, although neither is contained in the other, are nevertheless parte of a whole, or of experience, which is itself a synthetical com bination of its intuitions (anechautingen), although they only belong to each other contingently.