This beautiful man is 294 years old today
I first met him in my freshman-year World Studies class—we were studying the Enlightenment philosophies that led up to the French Revolution. I wanted to read more about these philosophies, but was a bit reluctant to do so because I was a freshman and I guess freshmen, like all adolescents stuck in the early phase of the Identity vs. Role Confusion crisis, never want to do anything. But I was interested enough nonetheless, so I scanned over some SEP entries.
Kant's philosophy was one of these articles. This quote piqued my interest:
“I freely admit that it was the remembrance of David Hume which, many years ago, first interrupted my dogmatic slumber and gave my investigations in the field of speculative philosophy a completely different direction.”
I’m not sure why, but before seeing this, I fell into the same set of misconceptions that a lot of people have about philosophy: middle-age; middle-class; meaningless, jargon-filled platitudes written on sheets of scented paper. Not particularly bad—just a bit pompous.
I scanned over it. Then I actually processed it, and paused my steady scrolling to reread what Kant wrote. It struck me as incredibly humble. A thought was born in my head, there: "If philosophy was really just this, just a collection of people applauding themselves for their own ingenuity—how could one philosopher be so frank and humble as to lower themselves and credit another philosopher with so much?"
"How could he so openly acknowledge previous mistakes?" My narrow-minded freshman brain assumed that all philosophers must have thought of themselves as infallible.
Like most people who are proven wrong, I tried to justify my belief by thinking that the contradiction to my belief was only an exception—obviously, I picked the worst way to think about my theory. I guess it worked for a few days, but gradually, as I learned to understand more about philosophy, I accepted the fact that I was wrong.
I was inspired by these vignettes: Kant’s blatant acknowledgement of his errors; Plato and Xenophon, eager students of Socrates who offered differing interpretations to his daimon but both worked arduously to preserve his thought; Kierkegaard, referring to his teacher, Poul Møller, as the "inspiration of [his] youth". It’s something about the concept of an evolution and acceptance of some non-trivial, ever-growing academic journey that changed my mind about philosophy.
This is all thanks to Kant.
Confession: I still don't fully understand a lot of Kant's ideas. But I think that's what continues to make him, along with other philosophers like him, so intriguing to me—as I evolve on my own intellectual journey, I think I'll begin to understand more and more of his brilliant ideas. I’m 15 and have time to mess with my own head through philosophy, so I’m terribly excited to learn more about him as I grow.
So, thank you, Immanuel Kant, for sparking my passion for philosophy. I think you've woken me from a dogmatic slumber. Happy birthday or something. :)