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Life
He walked into the Berlin salons as a Jewish outsider and reasoned his way to the center of the Enlightenment without abandoning who he was.
He never left Konigsberg. He remade philosophy. The mind does not simply receive the world; it constructs it. Everything after him is a response.
Connection
Moses Mendelssohn correspondents on enlightenment Immanuel Kant — Kant and Mendelssohn corresponded with mutual respect and answered the same public question, what is enlightenment, in the same journal, with Mendelssohn's reply appearing months before Kant's.
Ideas
Words
“The state gives orders and coerces; religion teaches and persuades.”
“Let us not feign agreement where diversity is evidently the plan and purpose of Providence.”
“Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”
“Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own understanding.”
Key Moments
1743 CE
The walk from Dessau
1767 CE
The Socrates of Berlin
1769 CE
The Lavater challenge
1724 CE
Born in Konigsberg
1781 CE
Critique of Pure Reason
1784 CE
What Is Enlightenment?
1804 CE
Death in Konigsberg
Works
Jerusalem, or On Religious Power and Judaism
Critique of Pure Reason
Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals