page_title: Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View
section_title: Background and composition
hierarchical_section_title: Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View / Origins and arguments / Background and composition
caption_attribution_description: English: Immanuel Kant
context_page_description: Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View is a non-fiction book by German philosopher Immanuel Kant. The work came as the result of successful classes instructed by Kant at the Albertus Universität in then Königsberg, Germany. While nominally detailing the nature of anthropology as a field, it additionally discusses a variety of topics in terms of Kantian thought.
context_section_description: Kant's work distills the content that he taught in an annual course at the Albertus Universität in then Königsberg, Germany, a program which Kant set forth from 1772 until his retirement in 1796. The book came out in 1798 with the intent of exposing Kant's viewpoints on the then embryonic intellectual field of anthropology to a wider audience. Despite not being free, unlike other speaking engagements by Kant, the philosopher's classes on the topic had achieved widespread popular interest in contrast to previous attempts to spread his general ideas to the masses.
  Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View wound up being the last major work of Kant that was edited by the philosopher himself. The strain of his age and the state of his health had significantly affected his writing. Despite the meaning that he attached to the book, those factors meant that he found himself unable to do more much than arrange his lecture notes for publication.
  Summing up Kant's views on ideals in the context of the book's composition, scholar Frederick P. Van De Pitte has written,
  "Kant realized that man's rational capacity alone is not sufficient to constitute his dignity and elevate him above the brutes. If reason only enables him to do for himself what instinct does for the animal, then it would indicate for man no higher aim or destiny than that of the brute but only a different way of attaining the same end. However, reason is man's most essential attribute because it is the means by which a truly distinctive dimension is made possible for him. Reason, that is, reflective awareness, makes it possible to distinguish between good and bad, and thus morality can be made the ruling purpose of life. Because man can consider an array of possibilities, and which among them is the most desirable, he can strive to make himself and his world into a realization of his ideals."
caption: Kant's book sums up the work of his Albertus Universität course and its philosophical explorations, the writing evaluating the intersections of morality and nature within human experience.[1]
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