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Kant synthesized early rationalism and empiricism, set the terms for much of 19th and 20th century philosophy, and continues to exercise a significant influence today in epistemology, ontology, ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, and other fields. Kant is famous for many ideas, including his distinction between appearances and things-in-themselves, and that the basic categories of the mind structure experience. He had argued that we can only know things as they appear and come to us through our sensory and mental faculties, not how they are in themselves independent of us and our mental apparatus. Among other things, this allowed for the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge, i.e. necessary and substantial truths that are about the world but which are not derived from the world. He is also famous for deontology in moral philosophy, especially his notion of the categorical imperative, and that reason is the ultimate source of morality.
