Historical figure · Pearson Edexcel International GCSE revision on Incandio

Immanuel Kant

Portrait of Immanuel Kant

Who Would Not Treat a Person as a Means · Philosopher · 1724 – 1804

The Königsberg philosopher who made human dignity the foundation of morality, held that a person may never be used merely as a means — and argued from that same ground that a murderer must be executed.

Defend these ideas against Kant

Incandio is a free revision platform for the Pearson Edexcel International GCSE, and on it a topic counts as mastered only once you have learned it, proved it in questions, taught it back and defended it against the person with the strongest claim on it. Immanuel Kant is that person for 6 topics on the course:

Who was Kant?

Kant was born at Königsberg in East Prussia in 1724, the fourth child of a harness-maker, and brought up in a strict Pietist household. He never left the region in his life. He worked as a private tutor for nine years before returning to the university, lectured for fifteen years as an unsalaried instructor paid by the students who attended, and only became professor of logic and metaphysics in 1770 at the age of forty-six. For eleven years after that he published almost nothing, and then produced the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781, at fifty-seven, followed by the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals in 1785, the Critique of Practical Reason in 1788 and the Critique of Judgement in 1790. His moral philosophy rests on a single idea: that a rational being has dignity rather than price, and may never be treated merely as a means to somebody else's end. From this he derives the categorical imperative and a series of conclusions, some of which his admirers find difficult. He held that punishment may never be inflicted merely to produce a good result, because that uses the criminal as an instrument, and that it must therefore be inflicted because a crime was committed and in proportion to it. In the Metaphysics of Morals of 1797 he attacked Cesare Beccaria by name for arguing against capital punishment, and gave the island example: if a civil society dissolved itself by agreement, the last murderer in prison ought first to be executed, so that everyone should understand what their deeds deserve. He wrote Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason in 1793 and was ordered by Friedrich Wilhelm II to stop publishing on religion; he complied while the king lived and resumed when he died. He was famously regular in his habits, never married, and died at Königsberg in 1804.

Major achievements

Life in brief

Explore the life of Kant — five chapters

  1. The Harness-Maker's Son — Königsberg, and a life spent inside it
  2. Fifteen Years at the Door — Paid by the students who turned up
  3. Dignity Rather Than Price — The idea everything else is built on
  4. The Last Murderer — Punishment, and the argument nobody expects
  5. Ordered to Be Quiet — Religion within the boundaries, and a royal rebuke

Read the five-chapter life of Immanuel Kant →

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