Was heißt: sich im Denken orientieren?

What it is

This is a short philosophical text written by Immanuel Kant in German in 1786, titled Was heißt: sich im Denken orientieren? (What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking?). The surviving transcription used here comes from a 1913 collected edition of Kant's works.

Why it matters

Kant wrote this piece during the pantheism controversy, a major dispute among German thinkers about reason, faith, and belief. In it he discusses how our concepts, even abstract ones, remain tied to sensory images drawn from possible experience, and he defends the freedom to think and reason for oneself.

Look closer

• Why might Kant feel it was important to publicly defend 'freedom of thought' at this time?
• What does Kant mean by saying our concepts always carry some 'pictorial' representation?
• Why do you think later editors carefully preserved the original spelling and punctuation of this text?