philosophy · 1770 – 1781

The Limits of the Understandings

Kant publishes the first Critique in 1781 — the decisive date is 1770, the year he announced the work in a letter — and bounds theoretical reason. The synthetic a priori is real and demonstrable, but it reaches only the phenomenal world; God, the world in itself and the soul cannot be settled by it. The moral law is reached by a different route entirely, which is what lets him claim an unconditional duty at all.

“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”