At the age of 31, Kant became a university instructor, lecturing on a wide variety of subjects, including logic, geography, natural history, anthropology, mathematics, and physics. His first published works were mainly scientific and his early philosophy was Rationalist, influenced by Leibniz. However, around 1770, his reading of Hume interrupted his 'dogmatic
slumbers,' which led to his writing the Critique of Pure Reason and to a period of intense creativity. After 12 years' labor, the Critique was published in 1781, when Kant was 57. It is one of the greatest and most difficult works in philosophy. To explain his ideas more fully, Kant published the Prolegomena (1783) and a revised second edition of the Critique (1787). After 1781, Kant wrote several works that explain the implications of the Critique for ethics, science, religion, politics, and aesthetics: the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 1785; the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, 1786; the Critique of Practical Reason, 1788; and the Critique of Judgment, 1790. In 1793, he published Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, which earned censure from the king's minister and forced
Kant to promise to refrain from publicly discussing religion.
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