Jennifer Weeks

Kant, as should not be surprising from the occasional aridity of his prose, was an abstemious man, who followed routine like clockwork. It is perhaps that rigid discipline that we can find in his writings. Kant's works, particularly Critique of Judgment, use rigorous logic and an enviable thoroughness in order to construct ideas that are thoroughly grounded in logic. In Critique of Judgment, Kant begins by examining what causes people to consider something pleasant, then moves on to discover what causes people to find something beautiful, and finally categorizes the experience of the sublime. He does all this in highly methodical language, yet with many examples that serve to make his prose lucid.

Kant was born (1724) and died (1804) in Königsberg. Many of his works exist in strong reaction to Empiricism and Rationalism. Kant instead formed what he called his own Copernican Revolution: that the mind creates nature. Kant's definitions of the sublime and genius, as well as his transcendental dialectic, had a strong impact on the philosophies of the Romantic era. This is amusing, given that Kant was scornful of speculative metaphysics and probably would have been disgusted by a great deal of Romantic output.


Kant On The Web

A Slew of Kant Links

My Kantian Analysis of Frankenstein


Return to previous page