Immanuel Kant Timeline

In 1756, Kant published three papers on the devastating 1755 Lisbon earthquake, offering naturalistic explanations of the seismic phenomenon. These writings contributed to the emerging scientific understanding of earthquakes in Europe.

The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures, a work in logic criticizing traditional Aristotelian syllogistic reasoning, was published by Kant in 1762, reflecting his growing critical engagement with rationalist logic.

By 1764, Kant had become a notable popular author. He wrote Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, discussing aesthetic experience, and was second to Moses Mendelssohn in a Berlin Academy prize competition with his Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality, often called the Prize Essay.

Image source: Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime

In 1766 Kant wrote Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, a critical piece on Emanuel Swedenborg's mystical claims about communication with spirits. The work displayed Kant's skeptical wit and marked his turn away from speculative metaphysics.

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Following his appointment as professor, Kant entered a period of relative scholarly silence lasting roughly a decade, during which he developed his revolutionary critical philosophy. Hume's Treatise on Human Nature (1739), arguing that people know the mind only through subjective perceptions, had awakened Kant from his dogmatic slumber.

Image source: Critique of Pure Reason

When Kant emerged from his silence in 1781, the result was the Critique of Pure Reason, printed by Johann Friedrich Hartknoch. In it Kant argued for transcendental idealism: space and time are mere forms of intuition structuring all experience, and we have knowledge only of appearances, not things in themselves. It is often cited as the most significant volume of metaphysics and epistemology in modern philosophy.

Recognizing the need to clarify the difficult original treatise, Kant wrote the Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics in 1783 as an accessible summary of the main views of the Critique of Pure Reason.

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Shortly thereafter, Kant's friend Johann Friedrich Schultz, a professor of mathematics, published Explanations of Professor Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (Königsberg, 1784), a brief but very accurate commentary that helped readers understand Kant's demanding work.

In his 1784 essay 'Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?', Kant famously defined enlightenment as humanity's emergence from self-imposed immaturity, urging individuals to dare to think for themselves. The essay helped spark his rising reputation.

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In 1785, Kant published Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, his first major work on moral philosophy. As its title indicates, the text was nothing more than the search for and establishment of the supreme principle of morality, laying the foundation for his ethical system.

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Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science appeared in 1786, applying critical philosophy to the foundations of physics. Together with the 1784 Enlightenment essay and the Groundwork, it contributed to Kant's steadily rising reputation through the latter portion of the 1780s.

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Kant published a second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1787, heavily revising the first parts of the book, particularly the sections dealing with the deduction of categories and the refutation of idealism.

Kant continued to develop his moral philosophy in 1788's Critique of Practical Reason, known as the second Critique. It elaborated the moral law and practical reason established in principle in the earlier Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.

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The 1790 Critique of the Power of Judgment, the third Critique, applied the Kantian system to aesthetics and teleology. In it Kant investigated judgments of taste, building one of the first comprehensive philosophical theories of beauty and the sublime since Baumgarten's Aesthetica (1750–58).

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In 1792, Kant's attempt to publish the second of four pieces of Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason in the journal Berlinische Monatsschrift met with opposition from the King's censorship commission, which had been established that same year amid fears sparked by the French Revolution.

When Kant nevertheless published a second edition of Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason in 1794, the censor was so irate that he arranged for a royal order requiring Kant never again to publish or even speak publicly about religion, a serious constraint on the aging philosopher.

In Toward Perpetual Peace (1795), Kant argued that lasting peace could not be secured merely through treaties but required republican constitutions, respect for international law, and a voluntary federation of free states. In this work he also ultimately rejected European colonialism, reflecting changed views on race late in his life.

Image source: Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch

Kant's promised Metaphysics of Morals was much delayed and did not appear until its two parts were published separately: the Doctrine of Right in 1797 and the Doctrine of Virtue in 1798. The Doctrine of Right contains his most mature and systematic contribution to political philosophy, extending his republican theory.

His Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View was published in 1798, drawing on decades of lectures on anthropology. The work examined human beings as free agents and addressed topics including human character, and also contained Kant's views on women, treating them as morally and politically subordinate.

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Kant responded to the King's reprimand over his religious writings by explaining himself in the preface of The Conflict of the Faculties (1798), carefully asserting his right to scholarly freedom while avoiding direct defiance of royal authority.

In 1800, a student of Kant named Gottlob Benjamin Jäsche published a manual of logic for teachers called Logik, prepared at Kant's request based on his lecture notes. Charles Sanders Peirce later remarked that Kant's whole philosophy turns upon his logic.