Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) taught in Königsberg and is the starting point without which Hegel’s philosophy cannot be understood.

Hegel first read him at the Tübingen Seminary, where Kant was regarded as a remedy against orthodoxy and at the same time pressed into its service: the limits of reason were meant to secure the space for revelation.

Hegel’s objection is not directed at Kant’s results but at his procedure. Whoever wants to determine the limits of knowledge must already have gone beyond them — otherwise he could not recognize them as limits.