PHILOSOPHY: Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant is a philosopher who tried to work out how human beings could be

good and kind outside of the exaltations and blandishments of

traditional religions. He was born in 1724, in the Baltic city of Königsberg,

which at that time was part of Prussia and now belongs to Russia, renamed

Kaliningrad. Kant's parents were very modest, his father was a saddle maker

Kant never had much money, a fact he dealt with cheerfully by living very

modestly. It wasn't until he was in his fifties that he became a fully salaried

professor and attained a moderate degree of prosperity. His family were deeply

religious and very strict. Later in life

Kant did not have any conventional religious beliefs, but he was acutely

aware of just how much religion had contributed to his parents' ability to

cope with all the hardships of their existence and how useful religion could

be in fostering social cohesion and community. Kant was physically very

slight, frail, and anything but good looking, yet he was very sociable and some

of his colleagues used to criticize him for going to too many parties. When

eventually he was able to entertain, he had rules about conversation at his

table. At the start of a dinner party he decreed that people should swap stories

about what had been happening recently, then there should be a major phase of

reflective discourse in which those present attempted to clarify an

important topic, and finally there should be a closing period of hilarity so that