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Emmanuel Kant citations
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Emmanuel Kant est un philosophe allemand, fondateur du criticisme et de la doctrine dite « idéalisme transcendantal ».

Né le 22 avril 1724 à Königsberg, capitale de la Prusse-Orientale, il y est mort le 12 février 1804. Grand penseur de l'Aufklärung, Kant a exercé une influence considérable sur l'idéalisme allemand, la philosophie analytique, la phénoménologie, la philosophie postmoderne, et la pensée critique en général. Son œuvre, considérable et diverse dans ses intérêts, mais centrée autour des trois Critiques, à savoir la Critique de la raison pure, la Critique de la raison pratique et la Critique de la faculté de juger, fait ainsi l'objet d'appropriations et d'interprétations successives et divergentes.

✵ 22. avril 1724 – 12. février 1804
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Emmanuel Kant citations célèbres

“Lhomme acquiert la femme, le couple acquiert des enfants et la famille des domestiques.”

Emmanuel Kant livre Métaphysique des mœurs

Métaphysique des mœurs, 1797, Doctrine du droit

“Agis selon des maximes qui puissent en même temps se prendre elles-mêmes pour objet comme lois universelles de la nature.”

Emmanuel Kant livre Fondation de la métaphysique des mœurs

Fondation de la métaphysique des mœurs, 1785, Troisième section
Variante: Agis selon la maxime qui peut en même temps se transformer en loi universelle.

“…il n'est besoin ni de science ni de philosophie pour savoir ce qu’on a à faire, pour être honnête et bon, même sage et vertueux.”

Emmanuel Kant livre Fondation de la métaphysique des mœurs

Fondation de la métaphysique des mœurs, 1785, Première section

“Un gouvernement qui serait fondé sur le principe de la bienveillance envers le peuple, tel celui du père envers ses enfants, c’est-à-dire un gouvernement paternel, où par conséquent les sujets tels des enfants mineurs, incapables de décider de ce qui leur est vraiment utile ou nuisible, sont obligés de se comporter d’une manière purement passive, afin d’attendre uniquement du jugement du chef de l’État la façon dont ils doivent être heureux, et uniquement de sa bonté qu’il le veuille également -un tel gouvernement, dis-je, est le plus grand despotisme que l’on puisse concevoir.”

Emmanuel Kant

Théorie et pratique - D'un prétendu droit de mentir par humanité, 1797

“Penser par soi-même.”

Emmanuel Kant livre Critique de la faculté de juger

Critique de la faculté de juger, 1790

Emmanuel Kant Citations

“Les esprits qui ont le sentiment du sublime sont entraînés insensiblement vers les sentiments élevés de l’amitié, du mépris du monde, de l’éternité, par le calme et le silence d’une soirée d’été, alors que la lumière tremblante des étoiles perce les ombres de la nuit, et que la lune solitaire paraît à l’horizon. Le jour brillant inspire l’ardeur du travail et le sentiment de la joie. Le sublime émeut, le beau charme.”

Emmanuel Kant

The Critique of Aesthetic Judgement

Joie

“Une beauté naturelle est une belle chose; la beauté artistique est une belle représentation d’une chose.”

Emmanuel Kant livre Critique de la faculté de juger

Critique de la faculté de juger, 1790

beauté

“Agis de façon telle que tu traites l'humanité, aussi bien dans ta personne que dans tout autre, toujours en même temps comme fin, et jamais simplement comme moyen.”

Emmanuel Kant livre Fondation de la métaphysique des mœurs

Fondation de la métaphysique des mœurs, 1785, Deuxième section

temps , personnes

“De tout ce qu'il est possible de concevoir dans le monde, et même en général hors du monde, il n’est rien qui puisse sans restriction être tenu pour bon, si ce n'est seulement une BONNE VOLONTÉ.”

Emmanuel Kant livre Fondation de la métaphysique des mœurs

Fondation de la métaphysique des mœurs, 1785, Première section

volonté , monde

“Ce dernier talent correspond proprement à ce qu’on appelle l’âme; car exprimer et rendre universellement communicable ce qu’il y a d’indicible dans l’état d’esprit associé à une certaine représentation – et ce, que l’expression relève du langage, de la peinture ou de la plastique -, cela requiert un pouvoir d’appréhender le jeu si fugace de l’imagination et de le synthétiser dans un concept qui se peut communiquer sans la contrainte de règles (un concept qui, précisément pour cette raison, est original et fait apparaître en même temps une règle nouvelle qui n’a pu résulter d’aucun principe ou d’aucun exemple qui l’eusse précédée).”

Emmanuel Kant

La Critique de la faculté de juger (Critique du jugement esthétique): Une oeuvre fondamentale de l'esthétique moderne

Emmanuel Kant: Citations en anglais

“That religion in which I must know in advance that something is a divine command in order to recognize it as my duty, is the revealed religion (or the one standing in need of a revelation); in contrast, that religion in which I must first know that something is my duty before I can accept it as a divine injunction is the natural religion. … When religion is classified not with reference to its first origin and its inner possibility (here it is divided into natural and revealed religion) but with respect to its characteristics which make it capable of being shared widely with others, it can be of two kinds: either the natural religion, of which (once it has arisen) everyone can be convinced through his own reason, or a learned religion, of which one can convince others only through the agency of learning (in and through which they must be guided). … A religion, accordingly, can be natural, and at the same time revealed, when it is so constituted that men could and ought to have discovered it of themselves merely through the use of their reason, although they would not have come upon it so early, or over so wide an area, as is required. Hence a revelation thereof at a given time and in a given place might well be wise and very advantageous to the human race, in that, when once the religion thus introduced is here, and has been made known publicly, everyone can henceforth by himself and with his own reason convince himself of its truth. In this event the religion is objectively a natural religion, though subjectively one that has been revealed.”

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Immanuel Kant

Book IV, Part 1
Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793)

“A metaphysics of morals is therefore indispensably necessary, not merely because of a motive to speculation — for investigating the source of the practical basic principles that lie a priori in our reason — but also because morals themselves remain subject to all sorts of corruption as long as we are without that clue and supreme norm by which to appraise them correctly…”

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Immanuel Kant

Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785)

“The body is a temple.”

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Immanuel Kant

A lecture at Königsberg (1775), as quoted in A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles from Ancient and Modern Sources (1946) by H. L. Mencken, p. 1043

“I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.”

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Immanuel Kant livre Critique of Pure Reason

Source: Critique of Pure Reason (1781; 1787)

“Newton… (after having remarked that geometry only requires two of the mechanical actions which it postulates, namely, to describe a straight line and a circle) says: geometry is proud of being able to achieve so much while taking so little from extraneous sources. One might say of metaphysics, on the other hand: it stands astonished, that with so much offered it by pure mathematics it can effect so little.”

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Immanuel Kant livre Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science

In the meantime, this little is something which mathematics indispensably requires in its application to natural science, which, inasmuch as it must here necessarily borrow from metaphysics, need not be ashamed to allow itself to be seen in company with the latter.
Preface, Tr. Bax (1883) citing Isaac Newton's Principia
Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786)

“The means employed by Nature to bring about the development of all the capacities of men is their antagonism in society, so far as this is, in the end, the cause of a lawful order among men.”

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Immanuel Kant

Fourth Thesis
Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View (1784)

“The third of this kind of principles is : matter neither originates nor perishes; all the changes in the world concern form only; a postulate which on the recommendation of common sense has spread through all philosophical schools, not because it is to be taken as having been found so, or as having been demonstrated by arguments a priori, but because if we were to admit that matter itself is fleeting and transitory, nothing at all that is stable and lasting would be left any longer to serve for the explication of phenomena according to universal and perpetual laws, and hence nothing at all would be left for the exercise of the intellect.”

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Immanuel Kant

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section V On The Method Respecting The Sensuous And The Intellectual In Metaphysics

“To these spurious principles must be added some others of great affinity with them… First, that by which we assume that everything in the universe is done according to the order of nature, which principle by Epicurus was proclaimed without any restriction, and by all other philosophers unanimously with extremely rare exceptions, not to be admitted but from supreme necessity.”

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Immanuel Kant

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section V On The Method Respecting The Sensuous And The Intellectual In Metaphysics

“The spurious axioms of the third kind from conditions proper to the subject whence they are transferred rashly to the object are plentiful, not, as in those of the Second Class, because the only way to the intellectual concept lies through the sensuous data, but because only by aid of the latter can the concept be applied to that which is given by experience, that is, can we know whether something is contained under a certain intellectual concept or not. To this class belongs the threadbare one of the schools: whatever exists contingently does at some time not exist. This spurious principle springs from the poverty of the intellect, having insight frequently into the nominal, rarely into the real, marks of contingency or necessity.”

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Immanuel Kant

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section V On The Method Respecting The Sensuous And The Intellectual In Metaphysics

“The prejudices of the second species, since they impose upon the intellect by the sensual conditions restricting the mind if it wishes in certain cases to attain to what is intellectual, lurk more deeply. One of them is that which affects knowledge of quantity, the other that affecting knowledge of qualities generally. The former is: every actual multiplicity can be given numerically, and hence, every infinite quantity; the latter, whatever is impossible contradicts itself. In either of them the concept of time, it is true, does not enter into the very notion of the predicate, nor is it attributed as a qualification to the subject. But yet it serves as a means for forming an idea of the predicate, and thus, being a condition, affects the intellectual concept of the subject to the extent that the latter is only attained by its aid.”

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Immanuel Kant

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section V On The Method Respecting The Sensuous And The Intellectual In Metaphysics

“A spurious axiom of the first class is: Whatever is, is somewhere and sometime.”

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Immanuel Kant

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section V On The Method Respecting The Sensuous And The Intellectual In Metaphysics

“The method of the science not being practiced much nowadays, except what logic prescribes to all sciences generally, that fitted for the peculiar nature of metaphysics being simply ignored, it is no wonder that those who everlastingly turn the Sisyphean stone of this inquiry do not seem so far to have made much progress. Though here I neither can nor will expatiate upon so important and extensive a subject, I shall briefly shadow forth what constitutes no despicable part of this method, namely, the infection between sensuous and intellectual cognition, not only as creeping in on those incautious in the application of principles, but even producing spurious principles under the appearance of axioms.”

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Immanuel Kant

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section V On The Method Respecting The Sensuous And The Intellectual In Metaphysics

“The use of the intellect in the sciences whose primitive concepts as well as axioms are given by sensuous intuition is only logical, that is, by it we only subordinate cognitions to one another according to their relative universality conformably to the principle of contradiction, phenomena to more general phenomena, and consequences of pure intuition to intuitive axioms. But in pure philosophy, such as metaphysics, in which the use of the intellect in respect to principles is real, that is to say, where the primary concept of things and relations and the very axioms are given originally by the pure intellect itself, and not being intuitions do not enjoy immunity from error, the method precedes the whole science, and whatever is attempted before its precepts are thoroughly discussed and firmly established is looked upon as rashly conceived and to be rejected among vain instances of mental playfulness.”

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Immanuel Kant

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section V On The Method Respecting The Sensuous And The Intellectual In Metaphysics

“If it were right to overstep a little the limits of apodictic certainty befitting metaphysics, it would seem worth while to trace out some things pertaining not merely to the laws but even to the causes of sensuous intuition, which are only intellectually knowable. Of course the human mind is not affected by external things, and the world does not lie open to its insight infinitely, except as far as itself together with all other things is sustained by the same infinite power of one. Hence it does not perceive external things but by the presence of the same common sustaining cause; and hence space, which is the universal and necessary condition of the joint presence of everything known sensuously, may be called the phenomenal omnipresence, for the cause of the universe is not present to all things and everything, as being in their places, but their places, that is the relations of the substances, are possible, because it is intimately present to all. Furthermore, since the possibility of the changes and successions of all things whose principle as far as sensuously known resides in the concept of time, supposes the continuous existence of the subject whose opposite states succeed; that whose states are in flux, lasting not, however, unless sustained by another; the concept of time as one infinite and immutable in which all things are and last, is the phenomenal eternity of the general cause} But it seems more cautious to hug the shore of the cognitions granted to us by the mediocrity of our intellect than to be carried out upon the high seas of such mystic investigations, like Malebranche, whose opinion that we see all things in God is pretty nearly what has here been expounded.”

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Immanuel Kant

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section IV On The Principle Of The Form Of The Intelligible World

“Several actual worlds without one another are not, therefore, impossible by the very concept, as Wolf hastily concluded from the notion of a complex or multiplicity which he deemed sufficient to a whole, as such, but only on condition that there exist but one necessary cause of all things. If several are admitted, several worlds without one another will be possible in the strictest metaphysical sense.”

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Immanuel Kant

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section IV On The Principle Of The Form Of The Intelligible World

“A whole from necessary substances is impossible. The whole, therefore, of substances is a whole of contingent things, and the world consists essentially of only contingent things.”

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Immanuel Kant

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section IV On The Principle Of The Form Of The Intelligible World

“The sham cause in physical influence consists in rashly assuming that the commerce of substance and transitive forces is sufficiently knowable from their mere existence. Hence it is not so much a system as rather the neglect of all philosophical system as a superfluity in the argument. Freeing the concept from this defect, we shall have a species of commerce alone deserving to be called real, and from which the whole constituting the world merits being called real, and not ideal or imaginary.”

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Immanuel Kant

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section IV On The Principle Of The Form Of The Intelligible World

“The question of the principle of the form of the intelligible world turns, therefore, upon making apparent in what manner it is possible for several substances to be in mutual commerce, and for this reason to pertain to the same whole, which is called world. We do not here consider the world, let it be understood, as to matter, that is, as to the nature of the substances of which it consists, whether they be material or immaterial, but as to form, that is to say, how among several things taken separately a connection, and among them all, totality can have place.”

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Immanuel Kant

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section IV On The Principle Of The Form Of The Intelligible World

“Space is employed as the type even of the concept of time itself, representing it by a line, and its limits — moments — by points. Time, on the other had, approaches more to a universal and rational concept, comprising under its relations all things whatsoever, to wit, space itself, and besides, those accidents which are not comprehended in the relations of space, such as the thoughts of the soul. Again, time, besides this, though it certainly does not dictate the laws of reason, yet constitutes the principal conditions tinder favor of which the mind compares its notions according to the laws of reason. Thus, I cannot judge what is impossible except by predicating a and not-a of the same subject at the same time.”

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Immanuel Kant

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section III On The Principles Of The Form Of The Sensible World

“Nature, therefore, is subject with absolute precision to all the precepts of geometry as to all the properties of space there demonstrated, this being the subjective condition, not hypothetically but intuitively given, of every phenomenon in which nature can ever be revealed to the senses.”

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Immanuel Kant

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section III On The Principles Of The Form Of The Sensible World

“The concept of space, therefore, is a pure intuition, being a singular concept, not made up by sensations, but itself the fundamental form of all external sensation.”

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Immanuel Kant

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section III On The Principles Of The Form Of The Sensible World

“The concept of space is not abstracted from external sensations.”

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Immanuel Kant

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section III On The Principles Of The Form Of The Sensible World

“It is absurd to excite reason against the primary postulates of pure time, as, for example, continuity, etc., since they follow from laws prior and superior to which nothing is found, and since reason herself in the use of the principle of contradiction cannot dispense with the support of this concept, so primitive and original is it.”

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Immanuel Kant

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section III On The Principles Of The Form Of The Sensible World

“Let the letters a b c denote the three angular points of a rectilineal triangle. If the point did move continuously over the lines ab, bc, ca, that is, over the perimeter of the figure, it would be necessary for it to move at the point b in the direction ab, and also at the same point b in the direction bc. These motions being diverse, they cannot be simultaneous. There-fore, the moment of presence of the movable point at vertex b, considered as moving in the direction ab, is different from the moment of presence of the movable point at the same vertex b, considered as moving in the same direction bc. But between two moments there is time; therefore, the movable point is present at point b for some time, that is, it rests. Therefore it does not move continuously, which is contrary to the assumption. The same demonstration is valid for motion over any right lines including an assignable angle. Hence a body does not change its direction in continuous motion except by following a line no part of which is straight, that is, a curve, as Leibnitz maintained.”

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Immanuel Kant

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section III On The Principles Of The Form Of The Sensible World

“Phenomena of the external sense are examined and set forth in physics; those of the internal sense in empirical psychology. Pure mathematics considers space in geometry and time in pure mechanics. To these is to be added a certain concept, intellectual to be sure in itself, but whose becoming actual in the concrete requires the auxiliary notions of time and space in the successive addition and simultaneous juxtaposition of separate units, which is the concept of number treated in arithmetic.”

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Immanuel Kant

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section II On The Distinction Between The Sensible And The Intelligible Generally

“Now the maximum of perfection is called ideal, by Plato, Idea — for instance, his Idea of a Republic — and is the principle of all that is contained under the general notion of any perfection, inasmuch as the lesser grades are not thought determinable but by limiting the maximum. But God, the Ideal of perfection, and hence the principle of cognition, is also, as existing really, the principle of the creation of all perfection.”

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Immanuel Kant

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section II On The Distinction Between The Sensible And The Intelligible Generally

“The sensuous may be exceedingly distinct, while intellectual concepts are extremely confused. The former we observe in the prototype of sensuous knowledge geometry; the latter, in the organon of all intellectual concepts, metaphysics. It is evident how much toil the latter is expending to dispel the fogs of confusion darkening the common intellect, though not always with the happy success of the former science.”

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Immanuel Kant

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section II On The Distinction Between The Sensible And The Intelligible Generally

“Percepts and phenomena which precedes the logical use of the intellect is called appearance, while the reflex knowledge originating from several appearances compared by the intellect is called experience.”

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Immanuel Kant

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section II On The Distinction Between The Sensible And The Intelligible Generally

“The force of the word World, as commonly used, of itself falls in with us. For no one will attribute accidents to the World as parts, but as determinations, states; hence the so-called world of the ego, unrestrained by the single substance and its accidents, is not very appositely called a World, unless, perhaps, an imaginary one.”

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Immanuel Kant

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section I On The Idea Of A World In General

“As the analysis of a substantial composite terminates only in a part which is not a whole, that is, in a simple part, so synthesis terminates only in a whole which is not a part, that is, the world.”

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Immanuel Kant

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section I On The Idea Of A World In General

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