A life devoted to the pursuit of philosophical discovery may be inwardly
as full of drama and event - of obstacle and overcoming, battle and victory,
challenge and conquest - as that of any general, politician, or
explorer, and yet be outwardly so quiet and routine as to defy biographical
narration. Immanuel Kant was born in 1724 in Konigsberg, East
Prussia, to a Pietist family of modest means.l
Encouraged by his mother
and the family pastor to pursue the career marked out by his intellectual
gifts, Kant attended the University of Konigsberg, and then worked for
a time as a private tutor in the homes of various families in the neighborhood,
while pursuing his researches in natural science. Later he got a
position as a Privatdozent, an unsalaried lecturer who is paid by student
fees, at the University. There Kant lectured on logic, metaphysics,
ethics, geography, anthropology, mathematics, the foundations of natural
science, and physics. In 1770, he finally obtained a regular professorship,
the Chair of Logic and Metaphysics, at Konigsberg. Because of limited
means and variable health, Kant never married or travelled. He remained
in the Konigsberg area, a quiet, hardworking scholar and teacher, until
his death in 1804.