The Centenary of Kant

Abstract

A HUNDRED years have now passed since the death of Kant. On February 12 the great philosopher died at Königsberg, in East Prussia, where he spent practically his whole life, a long, laborious and ascetic one, in the single-minded and ardent service of science. That his teaching created a remarkable epoch in the history of thought, an epoch, indeed, to which we refer and by which we estimate, of necessity, all subsequent developments, will not be disputed, and so important a centenary has naturally claimed the attention of the whole cultivated world. Immanuel Kant is so much akin to some of our English writers, notably Locke and Hume—was it not Hume who, in his own words, “aroused him from his dogmatic slumbers” and, moreover, does he not himself tell us of his Scottish ancestry?—and in some respects was so much influenced by them, that England may well join with Germany in paying a tribute of reverence to his memory. Kant literature is so voluminous already, and the story of his life, so far as he had a life apart from his work, has been so well told, that little remains to be said beyond a brief reference to his intellectual affinities and to the relationship of his critical philosophy to the existing world of physical science, to compare, in other words, the a priori and ideal with the naturalist and a posteriori results. An antithesis between these two halves of thought has ever been a prominent feature in our efforts after knowledge, though of late it has grown to be regarded as a convenience in classification rather than an absolute distinction. For many of us the policeman still acts as the representative of ethics, and we are seldom transcendental except in personal instincts. It is also incontestable that