Immanuel Kant is often considered the most important philosopher of modernity. He faced the greatest problems to emerge from the new human and natural sciences of the Enlightenment, which is that our natural science seems to render our experience as moral beings illusory and that our empirical science does not seem to have a rational ground. Kant sought to re-found the Enlightenment by providing a coherent ground in human reason for our various rational powers and to integrate science, morality and aesthetics with this ground and thus provide a comprehensive system of philosophy that unifies human experience.

Kant achieved this synthesis by promoting a revolution in human self-understanding, which he likened to the Copernican revolution in astronomy. Just as Copernicus’ observation that the earth circled the sun caused a “paradigm shift” in astronomy, so Kant propounded the even more far-reaching hypothesis instead of our thinking conforming to the things or objects we think, these things or objects instead must conform to the principles of our thinking. Kant’s proposal has been the basis for virtually every philosophical movement since.

In this introduction to Kant’s thought we will read excerpts from his predecessors to understand the problems he was dealing with and read from his more introductory and programmatic chapters. Kant’s thought has an intricate technical side, but his basic intentions can be seen clearly in his summary statements. We will seek to comprehend his own vision as fully and sympathetically as possible but we will also question the success of his project in making sense of our ordinary experience or understanding of life. This is the test for all philosophical teachings, and if we find tensions between our experience and Kant's thought, then we are in a position to identify the difficulties within the Enlightenment project as a whole that need our attention.