What is the human being?
In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant names three questions. In his Logic there are four, and the fourth takes in the other three.
The Logic appeared in 1800, edited by Gottlob Benjamin Jäsche, a philosopher close to Kant, as a handbook to Kant's lectures on logic. There Kant assigns a discipline to each question: metaphysics, morals, religion and, for “What is the human being?”, anthropology. Then comes the sentence: “At bottom, however, all of this could be counted as anthropology, because the first three questions relate to the last.” Jäsche compiled the Logic from Kant's papers. In Kant's own hand the four questions and their disciplines already appear in a letter to Carl Friedrich Stäudlin of 1793 (Ak. 11:429).
Kant was occupied with the human being for decades: he gave his lectures on anthropology from 1772/73 onwards, and the book “Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View” appeared in 1798. Pragmatic there means: it asks what the human being “as a freely acting being makes of himself, or can and should make of himself”.
Sources: Kant, Logic (1800), Ak. 9:25 (our translation) · Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798), Ak. 7:119 (our translation) — Kant corpus (German) · Letter to Carl Friedrich Stäudlin, 4 May 1793, Ak. 11:429 (German) · German Wikipedia: Gottlob Benjamin Jäsche (no English article) · Wikipedia: Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View
Which chapters and devices stand behind which door is a division for learning, not Kant's own: many of his ideas belong to several questions.
Chapters and works behind this door
For reading and listening: the chapters on this question and the works in which Kant asks it.
Life
A craftsman's childhood, the long road to the professorship, dinner parties and the famous daily routine.
Read Chapter IVAesthetics
The beautiful, the sublime and the purposiveness of nature: the Critique of Judgment.
Read ChapterKant against Kant
The formula of dignity next to Kant's writings on race, women and servants: objections in his time and the debate among scholars.
Read Chapter VIIITimeline
1724–1804 and beyond: life, works and world events in a filterable timeline.
Read Work · 1798Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View
Knowledge of human beings from one of Kant's most popular lecture courses.
Read Work · 1790Critique of Judgment
Taste, the sublime and the purposiveness of nature.
ReadHands-on behind this door
Every device asks you a question first. Reach the insight behind it and you get a star on your star map.
Kant's day as a clock
From being woken at 4:45 to bedtime: his documented routine, hour by hour (part of “A day in Königsberg”).
Try it Map Star collectedKönigsberg in 1763
Eight places from Kant's life on the city map of 1763, with his daily walk.
Try it Map Star collectedStar map of reason
Every device is a star, every door a constellation: see what you have already tested.
Try it Device Star collectedA day in Königsberg
Turn the clock and see on the 1763 city plan where Kant is at that moment.
Try it Device Star collectedKant's dinner table
Invite guests by Kant's rule and steer the conversation through narrating, reasoning and jesting.
Try it Conversation Star collectedTable talks
Five objections from friends and correspondents: first find Kant's answer, then judge for yourself.
Try it Device Star collectedBeautiful, agreeable or good?
Sort Kant's examples: are you judging only for yourself or for everyone?
Try it Device Star collectedThe storm and the sublime
From the ship to the safe shore: when fear turns into the feeling of the sublime.
Try it Text Star collectedKant against Kant
Kant's formula of dignity beside his writings on race, women, the death penalty and colonies.
Try itThe tiles are generated at build time from the tool register; the references are given with each device.
Why the three questions flow into the fourth
In the Logic Kant gives only one sentence of reasons. But you can read it off his three answers.
- 1What can I know?
Knowing needs both: senses that receive something and an understanding that orders it. That our intuition is always sensible is, for Kant, due to our nature (Ak. 3:75).
- 2What ought I to do?
The ought applies to a being that has reason and inclinations at the same time. For a holy will, says Kant, it is “out of place” (Ak. 4:414).
- 3What may I hope?
Hope is directed at happiness, and for Kant happiness is “the satisfaction of all our inclinations” (Ak. 3:523): it matters only to a being that has inclinations.
All three answers presuppose the same being: one that has senses and reason at once. That is our reading, not a quotation from Kant.
What the picture leaves out
The image of three rivers flowing into one suggests that anthropology answers everything in the end. But Kant's own book of 1798 is a study of human beings based on observation, and it does not replace the three Critiques. Some interpreters, Martin Heidegger in 1929 for instance, made human finitude the foundation of the whole Critique; that is an interpretation, not Kant's declared aim, and most Kant scholars, starting with Ernst Cassirer, rejected it.
Sources: Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Ak. 3:75 (sensibility and understanding) · Groundwork, Ak. 4:414 (holy will; our translation) · Ak. 3:523 (hope and happiness) — Kant corpus (German) · German Wikipedia: Immanuel Kant (moral philosophy; the Anthropology) · Wikipedia: Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (reception)