Immanuel Kant Books

In the analytic of the beautiful, I turn to the peculiar faculty of aesthetic judgment. Unlike the determinative judgment used in science, aesthetic judgment does not subsume an object under a concept. When we call a rose beautiful, we are not describing a property it objectively possesses, nor are ...

From Critique of Judgment

The paradox of taste lies in its subjectivity and its claim to universality. When I pronounce that an object is beautiful, I speak from feeling, yet I expect others to concur. This expectation is not derived from logic or coercion, but from a shared sensus communis—a communal sense that belongs to h...

From Critique of Judgment

At the heart of all moral consideration lies the question: what makes a will good? The essence of goodness in the will cannot depend upon what it produces—the results, intentions fulfilled, or happiness achieved—for those are contingent upon forces beyond our control. It must lie solely in *the prin...

From Critique of Practical Reason

When I formulated the moral law, I sought a principle that could guide every rational being without dependence on circumstance. This is what I called the *categorical imperative*. Unlike hypothetical imperatives, which say, 'If you want this, then do that,' the categorical imperative commands absolu...

From Critique of Practical Reason

To begin our critique we must understand reason as an organic whole—a system of faculties that cooperate to produce knowledge. This system I call the Transcendental Doctrine of Elements. It investigates the fundamental constituents of cognition, prior to all particular experiences. These elements ar...

From Critique of Pure Reason

We turn now to the Transcendental Aesthetic, the analysis of sensibility itself. All our immediate representations—our perceptions—must occur within certain forms. These forms, I argue, are space and time. They are not properties of things-in-themselves but pure intuitions that structure how we perc...

From Critique of Pure Reason