A New Yorker Best Book of the Year “An expert and engaging new introduction to the philosopher.” ―Adam Kirsch, New Yorker A foremost Kant expert takes us on a lively tour through the revolutionary ideas of the founder of modern philosophy. 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, 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. “An expert and engaging new introduction to the philosopher…Argues that what made Kant revolutionary was his contention that to understand anything―science, justice, freedom, God―we first have to understand ourselves…As Willaschek demonstrates, Kant believed that his ideas would change humanity’s understanding of its place in the world as profoundly as the Copernican revolution had changed our sense of Earth’s place in the cosmos.” ― Adam Kirsch , New Yorker “Refreshing…Shows that Kant’s moral philosophy, so often caricatured as being all head and no heart, is, like the man himself, in fact an admirable mixture of both.” ― Julian Baggini , Wall Street Journal “Willaschek provides a vivid and accessible account of Kant’s ideas, life, and times…[he] convincingly shows that Kant was grappling at the highest philosophical level with a practical problem that is still relevant today: how to balance conflicting political and moral views within a society with the need for a shared reality and shared moral imperatives.” ― G. John Ikenberry , Foreign Affairs “[Kant’s] philosophy is expounded with uncommon and admirable lucidity in [this book]…Willaschek provides an exposition that is as accessible as possible without oversimplifying.” ― Edward Feser , Claremont Review of Books “Willaschek’s study of the philosopher Immanuel Kant does two things superbly. Firstly, it situates him within his age. Secondly, it exhaustively draws out aspects of his thought that are timely today. Above all, it is a book that makes this elusive genius, often caricatured as an archetypal academic, cloistered from the real world, into a flesh-and-blood creature…Willaschek has humanized a man often dismissed as an odd hermit and a plodding pedant and given new life to his contentious philosophy.” ― Aaron Kyereh-Mireku , Open Letters Review “An excellent introduction to Kant and his ideas for those who have long been curious or those whose knowledge of Kant has dwindled to catchphrases.” ― Elizabeth Stice , Orange Blossom Ordinary “Marcus Willaschek’s Kant: A Revolution in Thinking lays out, in crystalline prose with limpid precision, the full range of concerns and contributions made by the most important thinker of the modern world. I can think of few writers whose understanding of Kant and ability to explain him to the general public are so well matched. This is a truly valuable book.” ― William Egginton, author of The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality “Kant's political and moral philosophy continues to be of profound interest to contemporary readers both in its own right and as the basis of modern moral and political thought as found in the writing of John Rawls, Christine Korsgaard, Tim Scanlon, and many others. Contrary to usual practice, Willaschek begins there and only then turns to Kant's equally profound but more abstract revolution in metaphysics. I do not know of a better introduction to Kant for general readers in any language than this engaging new book.” ― Paul Guyer, author of Kant's Impact on