康德(1724～1804年)
Kant, Immanuel
德国哲学家，启蒙运动最重要的思想家。马具商之子，生於科尼斯堡（今俄罗斯加里宁格勒），在当地大学读书，1755～1797年并在那里任教。他的生活平淡无奇。康德许多作品是关於形上学（在人们的理解中是无法感受的东西）不可能存在的议论。不过，他认为可以把形上学（在人们的理解中是预测经验的学问）置於「科学的确定道路」上；对上帝、自由和不朽保持确定的信仰也是可能的，也真的有所需要。但是，不管这些信仰建立得多好，它们却无法累积为知识：凭着人类的能力，完全无法认识纯概念的世界。虽然他在钜着《纯粹理性批判》（1781）中把上帝的理念、自由、不朽作为人类永不可知的事物，因为它们超越人类的感觉经验，他却在《实践理性批判》（1788）中论述：它们是道德生活的基本假设。他的《道德形上学的基础》（1785）是史上最重要而影响最深远的着作之一。他最後一部伟大作品是《判断力批判》（1790）。康德是古今最伟大的哲学家之一，他造出了笛卡儿理性主义和培根经验主义以降的新趋向。他在知识论、道德、美学方面的综合性和系统性工作大大影响了往後所有的哲学，特别是康德主义和观念论各种不同的德国派别。亦请参阅analytic-synthetic distinction、metaphysics。
English version：
1724～1804年
Kant, Immanuel
German philosopher, the foremost thinker of the Enlightenment. Son of a saddler, he was born in K?nigsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia), studied at its university, and taught there from 1755 to 1797. His life was uneventful. Much of Kant's work was devoted to arguing that metaphysics, understood as knowledge of things supersensible, is an impossibility. Yet he held that metaphysics, understood as the study of the presuppositions of experience, could be put on “the sure path of science”; it is also possible, and indeed necessary, to hold certain beliefs about God, freedom, and immortality. But however well founded these beliefs may be, they in no sense amount to knowledge: to know about the intelligible world is entirely beyond human capacity. Though the Ideas of God, freedom, and immortality are dismissed in his great Critique of Pure Reason (1781) as objects that humans can never know because they transcend human sense experience, he argued in The Critique of Practical Reason (1788) that they are essential postulates for the moral life. His Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) is among the most important and influential ethical treatises ever written. His last great work was The Critique of Judgment (1790). Kant was one of the greatest philosophers of all time; he synthesized new trends that had begun with the rationalism of Rene Descartes and the empiricism of Francis Bacon. His comprehensive and systematic work in epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics greatly influenced all subsequent philosophy, especially the various German schools of Kantianism and idealism. See also analytic-synthetic distinction, deontological ethics.
