Marcus Willaschek, "Kant: A Revolution in Thinking" (Harvard UP, 2025)

Dec 24, 2025

In this discussion, Marcus Willaschek, a prominent philosopher at Goethe University Frankfurt, delves into the enduring significance of Immanuel Kant's ideas. He explores Kant's 'Copernican revolution' in thought, arguing that human perspectives shape our understanding of reality. Willaschek discusses Kant's views on morality, particularly the importance of freedom and human dignity, as well as his radical political thought influenced by the French Revolution. The conversation highlights how Kant's insights on enlightenment and progress remain pertinent in today's political landscape.

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INSIGHT

Human Standpoint Shapes Reality

Kant's 'revolution in thinking' places the human standpoint at the center of how we relate to reality.
This reverses the traditional order by showing our cognition helps structure the world we know.

ANECDOTE

Kant's Midlife Discipline Shift

Willaschek recounts Kant's life change around age forty toward strict routine and concentrated work.
Kant maintained social ties but disciplined daily habits to produce his mature philosophy.

INSIGHT

Practice Can Guide Theory

Willaschek stresses Kant's primacy of practice: moral obligation can guide theory rather than follow it.
This allows moral striving despite a realist, pessimistic view of human capacities.

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Immanuel Kant is undoubtedly the most important philosopher of the modern era. His Critique of Pure Reason, “categorical imperative,” and conception of perpetual peace in the global order decisively influenced both intellectual history and twentieth-century politics, shaping everything from the German Constitution to the United Nations Charter.

Renowned philosopher Marcus Willaschek explains why, three centuries after Kant’s birth, his reflections on democracy, beauty, nature, morality, and the limits of human knowledge remain so profoundly relevant. Weaving biographical and historical context together with exposition of key ideas, Willaschek emphasizes three central features of Kant’s theory and method. First, Kant combines seemingly incompatible positions to show how their insights can be reconciled. Second, he demonstrates that it is not only human thinking that must adjust to the realities of the world; the world must also be fitted to the structures of our thinking. Finally, he overcomes the traditional opposition between thought and action by putting theory at the service of practice.

In Kant: A Revolution in Thinking (Harvard UP, 2025), even readers having no prior acquaintance with Kant’s ideas or with philosophy generally will find an adroit introduction to the Prussian polymath’s oeuvre, beginning with his political arguments, expanding to his moral theory, and finally moving to his more abstract considerations of natural science, epistemology, and metaphysics. Along the way, Kant himself emerges from beneath his famed works, revealing a magnetic personality, a clever ironist, and a man deeply engaged with his contemporary world.

Marcus Willaschek is Professor of Philosophy at Goethe University, Frankfurt, and a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science, where he is responsible for the German standard edition of Kant’s works. The author of four books, he is also coeditor of the three-volume Kant-Lexikon.

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature.

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos

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