Immanuel Kant was an 18th-century German philosopher who advocated a doctrine called transcendental idealism, arguing that human forms of perception and reason structure all experiences, which we cannot know beyond their appearances. He also located in reason the origin of both morality and aesthetics. Of particular importance to Kant’s philosophy is the concept of synthetic judgements a priori, or judgements which can be known to be true without being proved by experience yet are not proven by the terms themselves. Whereas Kant believed that he had proved the possibility of such judgements, Nietzsche finds his proof insufficient, instead arguing that they are necessary for human cognition but still “false” strictly speaking.
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Kant Character Timeline in Beyond Good and Evil
The timeline below shows where the character Kant appears in Beyond Good and Evil. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
1. On the Prejudices of Philosophers
...for truth than an unconscious expression of philosophers’ moral prejudices. Nietzsche gives the examples of Kant and Spinoza but claims that this critique indeed applies to philosophers throughout history.
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Nietzsche finds the concept of synthetic judgements a priori, one of the key pillars of Kant’s philosophy, to be strictly speaking untrue. He does not argue that philosophers should do away...
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