Kant read another thinker, named Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His thought on human beings, especially on morals, human freedom and perpetual peace, impressed Kant.
Some scholars like to include Kant as one of the German idealists, but Kant himself did not belong to that group.
The most-known work of Kant is the book "Critique of Pure Reason" ("Kritik der reinen Vernunft") that Kant published in 1781. Kant called his way of thought "critique", not philosophy. Kant said that critique was a preparation for establishment of real philosophy. According to Kant, people should know what human reason can do and which limits it has. In the "Critique of Pure Reason" Kant wrote several limits of human reason, to both feeling and thinking something. For sensation, there are two limits inside of human perception: space and time. There are no physical objects, but the limitations of our mind that work whenever we feel something through our senses. For thinking, he said there are twelve categories or pure rational concepts, divided into four fields: quantity, quality, relation and modality. Kant thought human reason applied those ideas to everything.
Is what we think only our fantasy? Kant said "No", although without those sensual and rational limitations, we can think nothing, then Kant was convinced there would be something we could not know directly behind our limitations, and even with limitations we could know something. It can not be a personal fantasy either, since those limitations were common to all human reason before our particular experience. Kant called what we could not know directly "Ding an sich" -- "thing itself". We can think "thing itself" but cannot have any experience about it, nor know it. God, the eternity of soul, life after death, such things belong to "thing itself", so they were not right objects of philosophy according to Kant, although people had liked to discuss them from ancient times.
Kant wrote two other books named "Critique": "Critique of the practical reason" (1788) and "Critique of the Judgement" (1790). In "Critique of the practical reason" Kant wrote about the problem of freedom and God. It was his main work of ethics. In "Critique of the Judgement" Kant wrote about beauty and teleology, or the problem if there was a purpose in general, if the world, a living creature had a reason to exist, and so on. In both books, Kant said we could not answer those problems, because they were concerned with "thing itself".
Kant had a great influence on other thinkers. In the 19th century, German philosophers like Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer and writers like Herder, Schiller, and Goethe were influenced by Kant.
In the early 20th century Kant's ideas were very influential on one group of German philosophers. They became known as the new-Kantians. One of them, Windelband, said, "every philosophy before Kant poured into Kant, and every philosophy after Kant pours from Kant".
Kant has influenced many modern thinkers, including Hannah Arendt, and John Rawls.
Aunt
An aunt is relationship that describes a woman who is a sibling of a parent or is married to a sibling of a parent. Aunts are sometimes called Auntie or Aunty. A man is a nephew to their Aunt and a woman is a niece. An aunt is part of an extended family. The child of an aunt's is a cousin. Often the word aunt is used with people who are not related to show closeness or respect.
In many cultures there are different words to describe a person's mother's sister and father's sister. In Latin a mother's sister is "matertera" while a father's sister is "amita".
A maternal or paternal relative is one who is related through one's mother or father, respectively. For example, a maternal aunt is the subject's mother's sister. An in-law is a relationship that is not by blood, but instead by marriage. The in-law shares the in-law relationships of the spouse's relatives. For example a aunt in-law could be the wife of the subject's uncle.
Homer
Homer is the name of the Greek poet who wrote the epic poems the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey". These are the earliest works of Greek literature which have survived to the present day, and are among the greatest treasures of the ancient world. They are a product of Mycenaean culture. The Iliad tells the story of the Trojan war, which took place around 1190 BC. The manuscripts of Homer were written much later, probably later than 800 BC.
What makes the history of this period so difficult is that the Mycenaean civilization was followed by several hundred years of decline, from which little or no writing has survived. This period, the Greek Dark Ages, ended around 800 BC, when once again we find Greek writing, though this time in their newly developed alphabetic script. Therefore, there is a distinct possibility that the Homeric epics had a life, perhaps a long life, as oral literature, spoken by story-tellers.
We know little about Homer, and the later Greeks also knew little about him. Some have doubted he was a real person; others think he was a woman.
A legend, has it that he was a blind poet who lived in Ionia. There is no definite evidence for any of these ideas.
There is archaeological evidence that Troy existed. The site of Troy has been discovered, and excavated. Therefore, it is a fair guess that the epic began as a long oral poem based on the siege of Troy, but with details added and changed as time went on. Homer's poetry is different from other poetry because it had to be short in order to be memorized.
The date of Homer's existence is not known. Herodotus said that Homer lived 400 years before his own time, which would place him at around 850 BC; but other ancient sources gave dates much closer to the time of the Trojan War. The date of the Trojan War was given as 1194–1184 BC by Eratosthenes.
Today, "the date of Homer" means the date of the writing down the oral poems, rather than the life of Homer. This is called the "transcription date". The language suggests that the earliest possible date for the transcription is 800 BC, and the latest possible date is 600 AD.
Marquis de Sade
Donatien Alphonse François, Comte de Sade, (2 June 1740 – 2 December 1814), better known as the Marquis de Sade) was a French nobleman, writer and philosopher who was born in Paris. The de Sade family were French nobility, who came from Provence. Different members of the house held positions in the Church, and the French state at different times.
Once Donatien had grown up, he had troubles with the authorities several times. He was bisexual. He spent many years in prison and at a mental asylum.
The main points he was accused of were:
On one of his escapades, he ""accidentally"" raped a close relative of his, who was a nun. This caused his family to drop him, and to hand him over to the authorities.
For this, he was sentenced to death (while being absent). He later escaped the death penalty by moving to Italy. The death penalty against him was later changed to a prison sentence.
In prison, he started to read about philosophy. He also started to write down his ideas. He tried to hide his writing, and also wrote in a very small print, so that the consumption of paper would not be noticed.
In later years, he was moved to an asylum (for the mentally ill), and gave his wife the possibility of a divorce.
After the French Revolution, he got out of the asylum, but in 1803 was declared mentally ill (and again was sent to the asylum). He died in the asylum in Val-de-Marne in 1814 at the age of 74.
The term 'sadism' was named after him. It refers to the habit of getting pleasure from giving pain.
Eurozone
The Eurozone (also called Euro area or Euroland) is the set of countries in the European Union which have adopted the Euro (€) currency. The European Central Bank is responsible for managing the supply of money within the eurozone and political decisions are taken by the "euro group", which is a meeting of the politicians from each euro country in charge of that country's economy.