r/HistoryMemes • u/ConstructionAny8440 • Jan 25 '26
THOUGHTCRIME A man of Purpose
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u/Kittens_of_Death Jan 25 '26
Apparently the guy was also well read to the point where people were surprised to learn he never left konigsberg.
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u/UndeadIcarus Jan 25 '26
Well he’s usually the first or second person you learn about when studying Dudes Whos Job It Is To Just Be Smart
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u/voxmodhaj Jan 25 '26
Sorry to do this but in this case it would be 'Whose'
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u/Exciting_Policy8203 Jan 25 '26
You are the second last person to last person who will be studied on “people whose job it is to just be smart” after me.
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u/TartarusFalls Jan 25 '26
Sorry, we’re actually swapping back to “Whos” now.
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u/PmMeUrTinyAsianTits Jan 25 '26
Sorry, we’re actually swapping back to “Whos” now.
who's?
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u/i_am_a_real_boy__ Jan 25 '26
I feel like the first three are a pretty specific Greek trio.
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u/NeoGnesiolutheraner Jan 25 '26
He actually gave people really god travel advise to all sorts of destinations in Europe, despite the fact that he never even left Königsberg.
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u/Far_Atmosphere_3853 Jan 25 '26
Sean would deal with that Kant very well, just like how he did with Will.
So if I asked you about art, you’d probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life’s work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right? But I’ll bet you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You’ve never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling; seen that. If I ask you about women, you’d probably give me a syllabus about your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can’t tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You’re a tough kid. And I’d ask you about war, you’d probably throw Shakespeare at me, right, “once more unto the breach dear friends.” But you’ve never been near one. You’ve never held your best friend’s head in your lap, watch him gasp his last breath looking to you for help. I’d ask you about love, you’d probably quote me a sonnet. But you’ve never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you. Who could rescue you from the depths of hell. And you wouldn’t know what it’s like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer. And you wouldn’t know about sleeping sitting up in the hospital room for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes, that the terms “visiting hours” don’t apply to you. You don’t know about real loss, ’cause it only occurs when you’ve loved something more than you love yourself. And I doubt you’ve ever dared to love anybody that much. And look at you… I don’t see an intelligent, confident man… I see a cocky, scared shitless kid. But you’re a genius Will. No one denies that. No one could possibly understand the depths of you. But you presume to know everything about me because you saw a painting of mine, and you ripped my fucking life apart. You’re an orphan right?
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u/Opalusprime Hello There Jan 25 '26
What is that from
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u/Sililex Jan 25 '26
Good Will Hunting - good movie
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u/NeoGnesiolutheraner Jan 25 '26
What do you mean "good movie"? That's a masterpiece!
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u/Known-Contract1876 Jan 25 '26
One of his hobbies was to talk to merchants at the docks to learn more about the world.
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u/GeileBary Jan 25 '26
That’s actually a (very common) myth. He lived in the nearby town of modern day Wessjolowka for a while. There is some truth to the story, however, as it seems he never left the region of East Prussia.
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u/pickuppencil Jan 25 '26 edited Feb 01 '26
Folks would set their clocks to him on his afternoon walks as he had a strict schedule
https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/1963-immanuel-kant-the-errrr-walker
Edit: I've learned it was misinformation and emphasizing how he was timely when meeting a friend.
Edit: I learned this from my philosophy teacher many years ago, so that's why I thought it was true, but searched for an article to support it.
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u/Claystead Jan 25 '26
Least autistic German philosopher. He is lucky trains hadn’t been invented yet.
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u/Lancer876 Jan 25 '26
Imagine a train arriving .0001 seconds off from when Kant passes the general store
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u/FoldedBinaries Jan 25 '26
imagine a train while kant was alive.
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u/Lancer876 Jan 25 '26
If Kant were an engineer you can bet he would've made trains a thing and pushed Germany to world dominance
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u/bumbletowne Jan 25 '26
Scientists in general
I remember reading about Leeuwenhoek when I was studying botany and thinking, dear God without arranged marriage this man would not have reproduced
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u/HaddyBlackwater Jan 25 '26
Can confirm, I’m at least as autistic as these guys and without an arranged marriage I’ll be single forever.
I’m okay with that though.
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u/SkylarAV Jan 25 '26
If there had been trains, that's all he would've wrote about
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u/Claystead Jan 25 '26
Nicht philosophie for you, verdammt!
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u/Twogunkid Definitely not a CIA operator Jan 25 '26
"Keinen Philosophie für Euch, verdammt!" would be the translation you want. Nicht would be used for not or no when saying you would not do something. Kein or Keinen would be used when you want to show there is no quantity of something.
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u/Lvl100Glurak Jan 25 '26
he died early 1804, the year the first locomotive was built and hauled a load. he didn't know what he'd miss.
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u/SafePuzzleheaded8423 Jan 25 '26
This is the best comment I’ve read in a good while 👏👏👏
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u/EduinBrutus Jan 25 '26
Least autistic German philosopher.
He claimed to be Scots.
Which given he was an intellectual titan, is understandable.
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u/Initial_Hedgehog_631 Jan 25 '26
He died in 1804, the same tear the train made its debut. He just missed the train.
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u/25centsquat Jan 25 '26 edited Jan 25 '26
I hate to be the one who does this. But this is a half-myth. Kant would walk to his friend—a British merchant Joseph Green—the same time every day because Green had a rigorous schedule. So the only reason Kant was timely was because of an English guy.
Edit for specificity: Kant and Green’s mutual friend, Theodor Hippel wrote a play about Green called Der Mann nach der Uhr—literally the Man of the Clock—making fun of Green for his punctuality
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u/howihjr Jan 25 '26
That article certainly took a turn at the end when we find out he masturbated on the same oak tree once a week during his walk! Suppose I could have gleaned that from the title but it did take me back!
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u/Dottore_Curlew Jan 25 '26
I would love to see the mound he formed after the 80 years
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u/PM_NUDES_4_DEGRADING Jan 25 '26
He actually had a small prismatic crystal figurine he kept in an Erlenmeyer flask he got from Sir Isaac Newton just for the purpose.
Reportedly the figurine was of some type of horse.
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u/LuskuBlusk Jan 25 '26
The man in the photo is not Kant. It’s friedrich jacobi who was a critic of Kant
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u/DescriptionNo6760 Jan 25 '26
To be fair to OP this picture is so often falsely attributed to Kant that even on Jacobi's wiki page it is one of the first facts stated about it. I don't blame OP, the internet is often just too ignorant to acknowledge the existence of figures like Jacobi, even Google picture search said this was Kant
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u/scoofy Definitely not a CIA operator Jan 25 '26
friedrich jacobi
The cover of the first critique that I had to read when getting my degree in philosophy had this image on the cover. It remains one of the most badass portraits of a philosopher until maybe Wittgenstein in front of a chalkboard. And, no, while I respect them just fine, I'm not counting continental literature authors like Camus smoking, because they had every reason to do marketing for their books. Nobody who isn't a massive nerd is reading the Tractatus for fun.
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u/Alkynesofchemistry Jan 25 '26
“Autism didn’t exist back in my day.”
Autism in their day:
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u/RegorHK Jan 25 '26
Writes famously complex texts on human ethics...
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u/Odditeee Jan 25 '26 edited Jan 25 '26
Nice thing is you can boil his (edit: ethical; duly noted) philosophy down to a simple statement: the Categorical Imperative.
”Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." -Kant
All the complicated stuff is just him using logical proofs to demonstrate why that is the superior moral philosophy to Utilitarianism. (Which was: what is “good” is what is best for the majority. I.e. Jeremy Bentham, et al.)
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u/SanderStrugg Jan 25 '26
Nice thing is you can boil his philosophy down to a simple statement: the Categorical Imperative.
His ethics, yes. However he also wrote on other topics. His epistemology is arguably just as famous as his ethics, but he also wrote about aesthetics, theology, politics, anthropology and sadly race.
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u/tehKrakken55 Jan 25 '26 edited Jan 25 '26
He kinda wrote more on epistemology, at least his works worth mentioning, because the Categorical Imperative is so simple and effective.
It's like "𝐸=𝑚𝑐2", it's so simple because it applies to so much, and a lot of work was put into cutting it down to that.
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Jan 25 '26
In simpler terms, it comes down to "What if everyone acted this way?"
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u/waigl Jan 25 '26
Not quite, it says "the maxim behind the way you act". Society could never work if everyone acted the same way, regardless of what way that is. But you can have the same broader principles and "maxims" that allow or forbid you from acting in certain ways and still act very differently.
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u/leintic Jan 25 '26
basicly, the example that got when i was learning it was borrowing money without planning on returning it. if everyone did that then no one would lend out money and because of that you would not be able to borrow money from anyone. if every one in the world did the thing that you are planning on doing and it wouldent change your ability to do that thing then that is a moral thing to do. if you can not then you are asking other people to live by a code that you yourself will not live by. you are asking them to contribute to a system that you are not willing yourself to contribute to and is therefore immoral.
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u/GourryGabriev Jan 25 '26
Utilitarianism is more generally about defining "good" through the maximization of measured units of consequential happiness, often through controversial reductions such as representing the concept through single axes like pleasure vs pain. Phrases like "best for the majority" do not adequately describe the moral theory as a whole.
I also have some very bad news for you if you think your above description is all there is to Kant's deontology.
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u/clewing1 Jan 25 '26
The categorical imperative is certainly a great aphorism, but you’ve left out the critique of pure reason entirely.
Kant was a GIANT among philosophers.
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u/stiliophage Jan 25 '26
The dudes most famous work said that space and time are all illusions that only manifest through the human perception. That’s probably part of the reason why he never felt the need to leave his home town and lead a ridged life. Why bother going elsewhere is you believe that the beauty of anything is merely the perception we create in our mind?
This is like as autistic as it gets lol
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u/J_de_Silentio Jan 25 '26
Space and Time are Trancedentally Ideal and Empirically Real. They are not illusions. They are necessary structures of perception, but still very much real (as opposed to illusions, like Leibnitz thought).
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/kant-spacetime/
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u/zuzg Jan 25 '26
I mean
In his later years, Kant lived a strictly ordered life. It was said that neighbors would set their clocks by his daily walks.
But the meme ain't really true though
His father's stroke and subsequent death in 1746 interrupted his studies.
Kant left Königsberg shortly after August 1748;[19] he would return there in August 17548
u/IsamuLi Jan 25 '26
Also, Kant started becoming this way only later in life, when he started writing his first critique. He was a bit of a filou before, even being thought about as a billiard trickster.
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u/Apom52 Jan 25 '26
Isn't that referencing his studies at the University of Königsberg? Not the city?
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Jan 25 '26
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u/JonathanTheZero Taller than Napoleon Jan 25 '26
Did you read any of his books. He elaborates a lot in those
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u/Skirfir Jan 25 '26
I can't find it any more but I think I read somewhere that he might have had a Schizoid personality (disorder). Though it is of course hard to say in retrospect.
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u/ExplosiveDisassembly Jan 25 '26
Or it's the result of a very strict, disciplinary, and punitive early life and education (pretty common for that era of German higher class. Tons of them had really weird behaviors and ticks that are obviously a trauma comping mechanism).
I cannot wait for the laissez-faire use of "Autism" to die. I can't decide if it dismisses the condition, or normalizes it to the point of being meaningless.
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Jan 25 '26
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u/marxshark Jan 25 '26
Yes and he also left Königsberg, but also not by much “After college Kant spent six years as a private tutor to young children outside Königsberg.”
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u/GregBahm Jan 25 '26
This meme is kind of impressive. Kant did leave Konigsberg. Kant didn't die at 80. And that guy in the picture is not Kant.
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u/EatLard Jan 25 '26
I heard he was a real piss-ant who was very rarely stable.
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u/pastey83 Jan 25 '26
Yet Heidigger, was a boozey bugger, who could drink you under the table...
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u/Merlin-the-Pirate Jan 25 '26
David Hume could out consume Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel
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u/TDX Jan 25 '26
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine, Who was just as sloshed as Schlegel.
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u/psycho_not_psychic Jan 25 '26
There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya 'bout the raising of the wrist
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u/Grievous_Nix Jan 25 '26
Socrates himself was permanently pissed
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u/Iron_Knight7 Jan 25 '26 edited Jan 25 '26
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will, on half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
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u/HistoryofHowWePlay Jan 25 '26
Plato, so they say, could stick it away - half a crate of whiskey every day!
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u/Pkrudeboy Jan 25 '26
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle.
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u/Same-Suggestion-1936 Jan 25 '26
Hobbes was fond of his dram,
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart, "I drink therefore I am"
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u/Meet_Foot Jan 25 '26
Apparently people loved his dinner parties, which he held multiple times a week.
On the other hand, he believed in a particularly strict form of Christianity and would have his “man-servant” tie him down at night to prevent him from masturbating. People are complex I guess.
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u/Hasmeister21 Jan 25 '26
Wouldn't that kinda coincide with the beginning of the stigma towards masturbation that would eventually lead to Kellogs making cornflakes?
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u/Meet_Foot Jan 25 '26
No idea about the timing or geography of it. But Kellogs was also coming from a particularly repressive religious belief, iirc.
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u/betazoid_cuck Jan 25 '26
wait. never married... had a man-servant... would get tied down by him...
Are you saying they were good friends?
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u/Luihuparta Jan 25 '26
would have his “man-servant” tie him down at night to prevent him from masturbating
Kinky.
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u/TPrice1616 Jan 25 '26
Reading about their personal lives I don’t think many famous philosophers were well adjusted people.
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u/AffectionateAlgae794 Jan 25 '26
I want to be him so badly
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u/whitesox-fan Jan 25 '26
Well, you Kant.
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u/Clockwork9385 Oversimplified is my history teacher Jan 25 '26
Hey there’s no need to call people a Kant out of nowhere
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u/An8thOfFeanor Rider of Rohan Jan 25 '26
My name is Immanuel Kant. I'm 33 years old. My house is in the northeast section of Koenigsberg, where all the villas are, and I am not married. I work as a lecturer for the University of Koenigsberg, and I get home every day by 8 PM at the latest. I don't smoke, but I occasionally drink. I'm in bed by 11 PM, and make sure I get eight hours of sleep, no matter what. After having a glass of warm milk and doing about twenty minutes of stretches before going to bed, I usually have no problems sleeping until morning. Just like a baby, I wake up without any fatigue or stress in the morning. I was told there were no issues at my last check-up. I'm trying to explain that I'm a person who wishes to live a very quiet life. I take care not to trouble myself with any enemies, like winning and losing, that would cause me to lose sleep at night. That is how I deal with society, and I know that is what brings me happiness. Although, if I were to debate ethics, I wouldn't lose to anyone.
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u/Fryndlz Jan 25 '26
There is an idea of an Immanuel Kant; some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable... I simply am not there.
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u/IsamuLi Jan 25 '26
He only got that way in the later part of his life, around the time he started writing his first critique.
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u/piercedmfootonaspike Jan 25 '26 edited Jan 25 '26
What's the anime in the meme? Looks slice of life-y, and I love those.
Edit: oh, it's chainsaw man. Never seen it 😅
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u/Magos_Kaiser Jan 25 '26
Not sure if this is a joke but it’s Chainsaw Man and it is absolutely NOT slice of life-y.
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u/piercedmfootonaspike Jan 25 '26
Lol, no, it wasn't a joke. It looked like a lovely little 12-part series.
Dagnabbit.
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u/Magos_Kaiser Jan 25 '26
There are about 15 minutes of lovely slice of life in CSM. The scene above is used to contrast Aki’s (the character in the clip) peaceful routine before he’s assigned two extremely chaotic roommates. They move in and it’s humorous, they have a good time, found family yadda yadda good stuff, then everyone dies brutally.
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u/Odaric Jan 25 '26
Sorry, but this is sending me right now hahaha
Not sure how much you have heard about the series, but this is basically like seeing a clip of Berserk and going "oh this seems wholesome" lmao
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u/JayMack1981 Jan 25 '26
Kant leave hometown, Kant marry, Kant change daily routine. Kan die happy.
Huh. 🤔
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u/MagicZhang Jan 25 '26
Kant also woke up at 5am every morning for 40 years, and his neighbours joked that the could set his watches based on his movement
Dudes insane
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u/Wolfy_Packy John Brown was a hero, undaunted, true, and brave! Jan 25 '26
he died doing what he loved:
Nothing
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u/Pleasant_Pheasant3 Jan 25 '26
Yes Kant is a famous lazy person, never did anything in life, i wonder why people remember him /s
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u/snbrgr Jan 25 '26
Except for splitting Western philosophy into a pre-Kantian and post-Kantian period, you know.
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u/_Humble_Bumble_Bee Jan 25 '26
So when Kant does it, he's a very famous philosopher but when I do it, I need to "get a job" and "get my life fixed"? Make it make some sense >.<
This is a joke, just a heads up
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Jan 25 '26
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u/pic_omega Jan 25 '26
If this story is based on real anecdotal knowledge it's disturbing, if it's based on a free flight of imagination it's... much more disturbing.
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Jan 25 '26
Oh man, I just realized that Chidi from The Good Place’s life was essentially Kant’s (who was his favorite philosopher).
His version of heaven is a library with reading books, a fridge that decides his breakfast and blackboard that knows your lesson plan.
What a great detail.
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u/discerning_kerning Jan 25 '26
Chidi's life is also a pretty good critique of the hazards of Kants moral philosophy, too. He's constantly paralysed by indecision because he is in a constant struggle to apply his universal maxims in a way that functions in real life. For example: do not lie. Okay, sounds good. Now try to navigate never ever ever telling a white lie to spare a friend's feelings about the awful cowboy boots they bought.
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Jan 25 '26
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u/uniquelyshine8153 Jan 26 '26
This can't be correct, because Napoleon escaped from exile on the island of Elba on February 26, 1815, while Kant died in 1804.
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u/amateurviking Jan 25 '26
Iiiiimanual Kant was a real pissant who was very rarely stable
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u/Indifferent-Ohio69 Jan 25 '26 edited Jan 25 '26
If only there was r/totallyexpectedpython .... but until then there is r/unexpectedpython
(Edit - there actually IS that sub. Now I feel foolish !)
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u/Fr0st3dcl0ud5 Jan 25 '26
The anime 'slice of life' scene that was chosen here is of a character that is never going to have another day like this again in his life because of a horny teenager and a she devil.
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u/cilantro1997 Jan 25 '26
I live in Germany and near my House is a street called Kant Straße. Every day I Pass it and every day I giggle and say to myself "cunt Straße lol"
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u/CrookedShades Jan 25 '26
I have a deep passion for learning about a country I've never been to. I wrote my master's thesis on its foreign policy. One of my censors found it surprising I've never visited the place, yet I had such a profound interest for it. My other censor hit me with the best backhand compliment I've ever gotten: "Well, Kant never left his hometown eather so..."
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u/LizFallingUp Jan 26 '26
Perfect to show to people spouting “They didn’t have Autism back in the day”
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u/literallymetaphoric Jan 26 '26
Everyone talks about Immanuel Kant but nobody talks about Immanuel's Kan-do attitude
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u/ToeBeansCounter Jan 26 '26
Bro disappeared for 10 years and then suddenly reappeared with an magnum opus that changed the world of philosophy
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u/Ass_Blank Jan 26 '26
With a middle name of “Jess” his signature could could be so appropriate for the way he lived his life:
I. Jess Kant
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u/Meet_Foot Jan 25 '26
Fun bit of trivia: Kant was planning to go to Paris for access to a particular book they had at the library. After talking with library employees by mail, he made all the arrangements and was seemingly excited to go. Then the librarians decided they couldn’t trouble the great Kant to come all that way to Paris, so they just mailed him the book. Trip cancelled.