Excerpt from The Rococo Age: Art and Civilization of the 18th Century It was Kant who had the last word on the subject of enlightenment, when he took it upon himself to investigate the range, limits and origin of human perception. In his principal work, the Kritik clef reinen Vernunft, first published in 1781 (pi. He sought to determine the extent of the knowledge at which human reason can arrive without the help of experience. The result demolished the rationalist philosophy, which had declared that human reason could transcend experience but had not tested the human powers of perception. Kant carried his ideas to their logical conclusion with amazing acuteness and vigour; he compared himself to Copernicus and he did, indeed, create a new image of the universe. I was obliged to suspend knowledge, in order to make room for belief' - this statement revealed him as the man by whom the philosophy of enlightenment was consummated and routed, and as the founder of idealism. Kant brings the 18th century to its close and his criticism provides the starting-point for lgth century philosophy - indeed, for the whole intellectual progress of that century. His pronouncement, If anyoneshould ask whether we are now living in an enlightened age, the answer is no, but it may well be that we are living in an age of enlightenment, marks the conclusion of an intellectual movement launched by Englishmen, continued by Frenchmen and completed by Germans, which had coursed like a torrent through Europe for a full century. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.