Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz’s attempt to characterize substance is the archetypal example of this.

In particular, he was convinced that many previous philosophers were involved in projects to answer questions or define concepts which simply did not yield themselves to philosophical inquiry. Kant’s main influence was undoubtedly David Hume, whose philosophical project was – in a similar way to Kant’s – extremely critical of the metaphysics which came before him. Kant and Hume Portrait of David Hume as a young man, Allan Ramsey, 1754, National Portrait Gallery of Scotland. He engaged with all of his predecessors to some extent, and saw fixing many of their mistakes as fundamentally enmeshed in the success of his own project. Kant was, in many ways, not just the end of but the culmination to this ‘Early Modern’ tradition in philosophy. Coming in at an accessible 160 pages, this is a very nice entry point to Kant.Richard Rorty, a famous self-conceived iconoclast, was attempting to structure a course which followed an alternative history of philosophy, one which left out all of the major figures whilst nonetheless telling a coherent narrative, and complained to a colleague that he couldn’t find a way to leave Kant out. Scruton also provides helpful background to contextualize Kant’s work, and makes clear why his influence continues to be so enduring. Considering the sheer breadth and depth of Kant’s thinking, Scruton does an admirable job in providing an illuminating overview of his most important ideas. Published in 1981, Roger Scruton’s Kant: A Very Short Introduction is a fantastic place to start for anyone with a budding interest in Immanuel Kant’s philosophy. Kant: A Very Short Introduction, by Roger Scruton (Note: Kant has a reputation for being a rather dense and challenging writer, so it’s recommended you pick up an introduction or two to supplement any reading of his primary works.) Let’s dive in! 1. After reading it, you’ll understand exactly why Kant is celebrated as one of the most incredible minds to ever enter philosophy. This reading list consists of the best books on and by Immanuel Kant. Kant is perhaps best known for his synthesis of early modern rationalism (think Descartes’s cogito ergo sum) and empiricism (think John Locke’s tablua rasa), as well as for his categorical imperative (‘act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time, will that it should become a universal law’). This is due to the hugely significant contributions the German philosopher - born in 1724 in Königsberg (then part of Prussia) - made to to virtually every area of philosophy, including epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, politics, and aesthetics. Immanuel Kant is considered by some to be the greatest ever philosopher in the history of Western philosophy - or at least certainly since the ancient Greeks Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.

Kant by Immanuel Kant