Priekulė) and were of Curonian origin.

[44][45] Kant was especially Beck, Beneke, Bolzano, Carnap,

the fourth of nine children (four of whom reached Fichte, Frege, Guyer, Habermas, Hegel,
adulthood).[46] Heidegger, Herder, Jacobi, Jaspers, Maimon,
Peirce, Popper, Reinhold, Schelling,
Kant was born on 22 April 1724 into a Prussian German Schleiermacher, Schlegel, Schopenhauer, Spir,
family of Lutheran Protestant faith in Königsberg, East Zeller
Prussia. Baptized Emanuel, he later changed his name to
Immanuel[47] after learning Hebrew. He was brought up Signature
in a Pietist household that stressed religious devotion,
humility, and a literal interpretation of the Bible. His
education was strict, punitive and disciplinary, and
focused on Latin and religious instruction over
mathematics and science.[48] Kant maintained Christian ideals for some time, but struggled to
reconcile the faith with his belief in science.[49] In his Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, he
reveals a belief in immortality as the necessary condition of humanity's approach to the highest
morality possible.[50][51] However, as Kant was skeptical about some of the arguments used prior to
him in defence of theism and maintained that human understanding is limited and can never attain
knowledge about God or the soul, various commentators have labelled him a philosophical
agnostic.[52][53][54][55][56][57]

Common myths about Kant's personal mannerisms are listed, explained, and refuted in Goldthwait's
introduction to his translation of Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime.[58] It is
often held that Kant lived a very strict and disciplined life, leading to an oft-repeated story that
neighbors would set their clocks by his daily walks. He never married,[59] but seemed to have a
rewarding social life — he was a popular teacher and a modestly successful author even before starting
on his major philosophical works. He had a circle of friends with whom he frequently met, among them
Joseph Green, an English merchant in Königsberg.

A common myth is that Kant never traveled more than 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) from Königsberg his
whole life.[60] In fact, between 1750 and 1754 he worked as a tutor (Hauslehrer) in Judtschen[61] (now
Veselovka, Russia, approximately 20 km) and in Groß-Arnsdorf[62] (now Jarnołtowo near Morąg
(German: Mohrungen), Poland, approximately 145 km).

Young scholar
Kant showed a great aptitude for study at an early age. He first attended the Collegium Fridericianum
from which he graduated at the end of the summer of 1740. In 1740, aged 16, he enrolled at the
University of Königsberg, where he spent his whole career.[63] He studied the philosophy of Gottfried
Leibniz and Christian Wolff under Martin Knutzen (Associate Professor of Logic and Metaphysics from
1734 until his death in 1751), a rationalist who was also familiar with developments in British
philosophy and science and introduced Kant to the new mathematical physics of Isaac Newton.
Knutzen dissuaded Kant from the theory of pre-established harmony, which he regarded as "the pillow
for the lazy mind".[64] He also dissuaded Kant from idealism, the idea that reality is purely mental,
which most philosophers in the 18th century regarded in a negative light. The theory of transcendental
idealism that Kant later included in the Critique of Pure Reason was developed partially in opposition
to traditional idealism.