Immanuel Kant
(1724-1804)

Immanuel Kant was born in the East Prussian city of Königsberg, studied at 
its university, and worked there as a tutor and professor for more than 
forty years, never travelling more than fifty miles from home. Although 
his outward life was one of legendary calm and regularity, Kant's 
intellectual work easily justified his own claim to have effected a 
Copernican revolution in philosophy. Beginning with his Inaugural 
Dissertation (1770) on the difference between right- and left-handed 
spatial orientations, Kant patiently worked out the most comprehensive and 
influential philosophical programme of the modern era. His central 
thesis—that the possibility of human knowledge presupposes the active 
participation of the human mind—is deceptively simple, but the details of 
its application are notoriously complex.