Explore
Compare
Life
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. He meant it as a diagnosis, not a slogan. The cure he proposed transformed political thought forever.
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
Jean-Jacques Rousseau moral inspiration Immanuel Kant — Kant kept only one picture on his wall: a portrait of Rousseau. Rousseau's insistence on human dignity and freedom shaped the categorical imperative.
Ideas
Words
“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.”
“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
1712 CE
Born in Geneva
1755 CE
Discourse on Inequality
1762 CE
The Social Contract
1778 CE
Death near Paris
1724 CE
Born in Konigsberg
1781 CE
Critique of Pure Reason
1784 CE
What Is Enlightenment?
1804 CE
Death in Konigsberg
Works
The Social Contract
Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals
Critique of Pure Reason