Immanuel Kant

One Hundred Miles, His Whole Life

Kant was born in Königsberg in 1724 and died there, having never traveled more than a hundred miles from the city. His days were so regular that the story spread that neighbors set their clocks by his afternoon walk. He published almost nothing of consequence until his late fifties, then produced in a decade the Critique of Pure Reason, the book that split philosophy in two. His moral argument is in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785): act only on a rule you could will everyone to follow, and treat every person as an end in themselves, never merely as a means. Right and wrong are not matters of consequence, temperament, or divine command. They are what reason requires of anyone who thinks clearly.

A Local Landmark, Declining

He declined slowly and largely in public view, a local landmark losing his memory. He died on 12 February 1804. His last recorded word was "Es ist gut" — it is good. Königsberg shut for the funeral and a crowd followed the coffin through the city, which had spent forty years watching him walk the same route at the same hour.