Immanuel Kant (German pronunciation: ) (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a professor of philosophy at Königsberg, in Prussia, researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy during and at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment.
At the time, there were major successes and advances in physical science (for example, Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Edmund Burke) using reason and logic. But this stood in sharp contrast to the scepticism and lack of agreement or progress in empiricist philosophy.
Kant’s magnum opus, the Critique of Pure Reason, aimed to unite reason with experience to move beyond these failures of traditional philosophy and metaphysics. He ended an age of speculation where objects outside experience were used to support what he saw as futile theories, while also giving sound arguments against the scepticism and idealism of thinkers such as Descartes, Berkeley and Hume.