English texts
Kant introduction and speech
Max Egremont
I first saw Immanuel Kant in 1992, during my first visit to Kaliningrad, a short time after the Soviet Union had come to an end. It was, alas, not the great man himself but his tomb, a miraculous survival after conflict, destruction and rebuilding – an evocation of the past alongside what was then the ruined cathedral and other reminders of the city’s fractured history. How much had changed in the philosopher’s home city since his death in 1804. Even the name is different. For Kant, from his birth there in 1724, had lived in Königsberg, not Kaliningrad. What he could not foresee was that they are now the same place. ...
Kant in China
Prof. Han Shuifa
Kant was first introduced into China in 1866. In 1886, the British missionary Joseph A. E. mentioned Descartes, Bacon, Locke, Newton, Leibniz, Kant, Hume, and Spencer in his translation of the volume "Science" (i.e., philosophy) of the book "A Brief Description of Western Studies" in a brief introduction to the history of Western philosophy. ...
Kant’s Life
Steve Naragon
One generally learns at least three things, however brief the sketch of Kant’s life: he never married, he never traveled, and he ordered his life so rigidly that the housewives of Königsberg could set their clocks to his daily walks. Like the spare lines of a caricature, these provide some sense of the man, but one could also point out in reply that Kant was by no means the first bachelor in the history of philosophy nor the only bachelor in Königsberg; that Kant actually managed to get out of town quite often, if not very far; and that only in his later years, when it appeared that his life-ambitions were outstripping his life, did he buckle-down and fashion himself into something more like a machine. The following will add some shading to those spare lines ...
Four of the seven names engraved on the Kant glass, with the date 30 August 1763, are of men who came from the English port of Hull, or to give it its correct name, Kingston-upon-Hull. Two, Joseph Green and Robert Motherby, were permanent residents at Königsberg, and close friends of Kant, and are well known. The other two - Charles Staniforth, who had recently married Joseph Green’s sister, and John Chappell, were only visitors, but had probably known Kant for some years.
What were the origins of these four men, why were they in Königsberg, and what happened to them. ...
Immanuel Kant, Joseph Green, Robert Motherby and the Americans
Gerfried Horst
The merchant Joseph Green (1727-1786), who came from Hull in England, had "already come over from England at a young age" and built up a flourishing trading business in Königsberg. He looked for a young man in his home town to help him in his business and found Robert Motherby (1736-1801), who is said to have "come to the city on the banks of the Pregel from Hull around 1750 at the age of 14." A recent Kant biography states that he came to Königsberg at the age of 18, i.e. in 1754. ...
The Königsberg Kant glass
Simon Wain-Hobson
Decoration of the bowl can transform an ordinary drinking glass into something unique. Jacobite Amen glasses c1745 are the ultimate examples of diamond point engraving. While these plain stemmed and air twist glasses don’t say much per se, their inscriptions transport us to another time and place, notably the 1745 uprising led by Bonnie Prince Charlie, that has kept many a collector and researcher busy for years.1 In 1937 Arthur Churchill Ltd devoted a catalogue to decorated Georgian glass, mainly those with engraving. Its title, History in Glass, says it all. ...
© Glass Society, Glass Matters 10, January 2021
East Prussia and China: Tracing a Wondrous Relationship
Thomas Heberer
The overarching framework of this book are the issues culture of memory, collective memory, and the Chinese knowledge perception with regard to former East Prussia and its great personalities.
In detail, this publication is concerned with the following issues: Firstly, the author's East Prussian family background and his recent travels to former East Prussia, particularly the parts belonging to Russia, Poland and Lithuania.
What is enlightenment in China? An essay about political (im)maturity
Magnus Obermann
In 1784, Immanuel Kant wrote these lines to address the question “What is Enlightenment?”. In his essay, Kant took a critical stance on the church and the state Prussian authorities and advocated for an intrinsically motivated process of enlightenment. Kant’s dictum of the “emergence from self-imposed immaturity” has since become an undisputed credo of the enlightenment.
So why would we need another essay on enlightenment “in China”? Initially, one should assume that Kant’s ideas are universally valid, rendering it unnecessary to formulate a separate “Chinese enlightenment”. ...
Immanuel Kant – Racist and Colonialist?
Prof. Dr. Vadim A. Chaly
A murder of an Afro-American detainee by a policeman at the end of May 2020 caused a public outrage in the United States, which led to a campaign against the monuments to historical figures whose reputation, according to the protesters, was marred by racism. Some German publicists, impressed by the campaign, initiated an analogous search for racists among the national thinkers and politicians of the past. Suddenly Kant emerged as a ‘scapegoat’. This statement is an attempt to assess such reactions from the perspective of Russia’s experience. ...
Notice to Physicians
Immanuel Kant
The noteworthy and wondrous epidemic that just subsided for us is, with respect to the symptoms and the effective remedies against it, actually a topic only for doctors; yet its spread and traveling through vast countries still elicits the astonishment and scrutiny of those who see this peculiar appearance merely from a physical geographer’s perspective. ...
The Last Days of Immanuel Kant
Thomas De Quincey
I take it for granted that every person of education will acknowledge some interest in the personal history of Immanuel Kant. A great man, though in an unpopular path, must always be an object of liberal curiosity. To suppose a reader thoroughly indifferent to Kant, is to suppose him thoroughly unintellectual; and, therefore, though in reality he should happen not to regard him with interest ...
Kant and the Motherby Family
Marianne Motherby
Robert Motherby, long-time friend of Immanuel Kant, was born on December 23, 1736 in Hull (Yorkshire, England). He had four brothers and three sisters. His father George (born on December 20, 1688), married Anne Hotham (died 1748) while Robert was still a child. Robert Motherby probably came to Königsberg around 1751: The English merchant Joseph Green (1727-1786), who ran a business in Königsberg at the time, was searching for a reliable young Englishman to be his assistant and one day become his partner. ...
Bean Speech 2016
Marianne Motherby
William Motherby - Founder of the Friends of Kant Society
... William was the son of Robert Motherby (1736 - 1801), who emigrated from England (Kingston upon Hull), and his wife Charlotte (1742 - 1794), who came from a Huguenot family. William’s father came to Königsberg as a young man at the invitation of an English merchant, Joseph Green (1727 - 1786). Joseph Green, nine years older than Robert and a bachelor with no children, operated a successful trading company in Königsberg. He wanted Robert Motherby to become his partner and ultimately his successor. ...
Memorial Address for William Motherby
August Hagen
William Motherby - Founder of the Friends of Kant Society
... William Motherby was born in Königsberg on 9 December 1776. His father was an English man, his mother, Charlotte Toussaint, was a French woman, and he was completely English, but for that reason no less German – for as we say with Tieck, “Shakespeare and his better contemporaries are also German, but neither then nor now was the German ever French, and so on,” and in his noble veins there pulsed a French liveliness. The conflict of combining these different elements in him showed itself in several ways. His unguarded opinion that seemed to hide nothing from the world, sometimes wrapped itself in the mysterious cloak of...
Prussian Provincial Newspapers: Obituary of Robert Motherby
Caesar von Lengerke
The feelings of pain surrounding the death of a dear one are often mixed with another feeling that is foreign to us when a full and healthy life is suddenly taken away, but fills us with the most bitter melancholy when a long-suffering and sickened body, whose spirit and innermost being was related to us, returns to dust. If it is true that life, considered in the highest and purest sense, is the very thing that most urgently consoles us about death, then we will be able to bear up in the thought that life gave that strong man what it could offer up to the last hour; that he performed his duty without inhibition until the moment he was called to his eternal home ...
The Friends of Kant Society
Gerfried Horst
The “Friends of Kant Society” can be traced back directly to the circle of friends invited by Kant to his house each year on his birthday, April 22. The group met there for the last time on April 22, 1803 before Immanuel Kant’s death on February 12, 1804. Dr. William Motherby, the son of Kant’s friend Robert Motherby and himself a good friend of Kant, invited the participants of the 1803 birthday party to a commemorative party on April 22, 1805. This event was held in Kant's home, which had since been purchased by an innkeeper. ...
22nd April 2020 Speech on the Occasion of the 296th Anniversary of Immanuel Kant
Gerfried Horst
Dear Friends of Kant,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am pleased to address all the English speaking friends of the philosopher Immanuel Kant. As Chairman of the international society FREUNDE KANTS UND KÖNIGSBERGS, it has been a great honour to be able to say a few words each year, on the philosopher's birthday, in the presence of a crowd of Friends of Kant at the foot of his grave. ...