The Prussian philosopher, author of 'Critique of Pure Reason', changed people's way of thinking and encouraged them to reflect for themselves. On the three-hundredth anniversary of his birth, when authoritarian figures and bloody wars reappear, his cosmopolitan ideology makes sense.
“With what is happening right now in the war in Ukraine or what Israel is doing in Gaza, what Kant wrote could not be more topical,” says Roberto R. Aramayo, professor at the CSIC Institute of Philosophy. The thinker who opened a path for us to be better citizens, born on April 22, 1724 in Königsberg (today Kaliningrad, in Russia), also promoted international law and the concept of a government organized in a federation of states, inspiring entities like the UN or the European Union. He is cited, commented on and fought—especially from postmodernism—tirelessly. ‘Kant has surely influenced you even if he has not read it,’ Goethe warned.