Kant, IMMANUEL

1724–1804. Greatest of German philosophers, prof. Königsberg 1770-97; founder of transcendental idealism, which was designed to refute the skepticism of Hume and the sensationalism of Locke, while correcting the dualism of Des cartes. His knowledge was equally profound in Physical Geography and Anthropology; he anticipated La Place in proposing the nebular hypothesis regarding the origin of the solar system. His chief work was in the field of philosophy, which he revolutionized by his theory of the ideality of space and time, his categories of the understanding (organic or constitutional functions of the mind), and his agnostic conclusions regarding the incapacity of speculative reason, on the ground of the distinction between phenomena and things in themselves,