Immanuel Kant was the paradigmatic philosopher of the European Enlightenment.
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Immanuel Kant was clearly not a Christian, at least in the traditional sense. As he lived in the Enlightenment, he is often thought of as a Deist, but Kant thought of himself as a theist. However not all theists must be Christians. Some say he was a panentheist. Since this descriptive term was unknown when Kant lived, he was unable to tell us whether this best fitted his beliefs.
Immanuel Kant mainly studied philosophies of: 1.Theories of Perception 2.Faculty of Understanding 3.Schema 4.Moral philosophy 5.Aesthetic philosophy 6.Political philosophy
He felt that science should be used as a way to understand the world.
he felt that science should be used as a way to understand the world
The Declaration of Independence was written before the publishing of Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Given such a fact, as well as the difficulty in translating works and having those works reach the colonies, it is hard to imagine that any influence could have been evident in the Declaration.
Kant argues that, "He who contemplates suicide should ask himself whether his action can be consistent with the idea of humanity as an end in itself." Suicide then uses oneself (a human) as a means to an end (death, end of pain), so is inherently immoral. Martyrdom is in one sense killing oneself so seems too violate Kant's strong condemnation of suicide. However, Kant also recognizes 'imperfect duties" which among others requires us to help and support others in our community. Martyrdom presumably is one expression, perhaps an extreme expression, of this duty to help others. Yet, the first first principle of not using humanity as an end in itself is a perfect duty. Kant holds that a perfect duty can never be replaced or usurped by an imperfect duty; hence, martyrdom is based on a moral miscalculation as one is doing just this move, seeing the duty to help others (through martyring oneself) as more important or pressing than using oneself as a means to an end (one's death). I haven't seen a passage where Kant directly speaks of martyrs, but he was a Christian and presumably accepted the occurrence of Christian martyrs as part of the important history of the church. Hence, this reconstruction of a view he seems to be committed to seems to be at odds with his religious faith. As far as I know he didn't address or perhaps even consider this conflict (if it is a conflict).