1-157-568 - Oxford Science Archive/Heritage Images

Immanuel Kant, German philosopher, 1812. Profile portrait surrounded by an Ouroboros, an ancient Egyptian-Greek symbolic serpent with its tail in its mouth devouring itself, representing the unity of the material and spiritual in the eternal circle of change and recreation. Kant (1724-1804) became professor of logic and metaphysics at the University of Konigsberg, Germany in 1770. His most famous work was his 'Critique of Pure Reason', published in 1781, which provided a response to the empiricism of David Hume. Other works included the 'Critique of Practical Reason' (1788), and 'Critique of Judgment' (1790). Kant is regarded as one of the great European philosophers, and his ideas have considerably influenced later thinkers.