Many contemporaries criticized him for smashing the Age of Reason. Goethe, however, remarked that reading a page of Immanuel Kant was like entering a bright and well-lighted room: The great eighteenth-century philosopher illuminated everything he ever pondered. The twelve essays in this volume reveal Kant's towering importance as an ethical and social thinker as well as his enduring influence on the shape of philosophy. Included are excerpts from Dreams of a Visionary, Prolegomena to Every Future Metaphysics, Metaphysical Foundations of Morals, Critique of Judgement, and Eternal Peace.

As Professor Friedrich writes in his introduction to this volume: "The problem of freedom, the freedom of the human personality to unfold and fulfill its higher destiny, is the central issue of all of Kant's philosophizing."