Philosophy’s Greatest Moral Genius Cut Off His Entire Family: Immanuel Kant

This philosopher rarely leaves his hometown, rarely leaves his house in his later years, never marries, never has children, and does not allow his sisters inside his house for 25 years: Immanuel Kant.

His character reminds me of a TV character: Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory.

Just like Sheldon, he has a specific spot that no one else can sit in. Sheldon never lets anyone touch his food. And Immanuel? He never lets anyone talk to him outdoors in order to protect his lungs.

Sheldon has an unyielding, minute-by-minute morning and bathroom schedule, and Immanuel never sleeps past 4:55 a.m.; he lives by a strict schedule.

People think Sheldon is very exaggerated. I guess they don’t know Immanuel, because Sheldon is warmer and more social than Immanuel.

He had a younger brother, Johann Heinrich, who went on to become a pastor in another city. His brother repeatedly wrote Kant long, emotional letters begging for a response. But Kant always ignored him. He never wrote him a letter back.

Johann Heinrich once started a letter with: “My Brother! If it is not possible to receive a response…I know my letters irritate you and disrupt your thoughts. I will never write to you again after this. But please, just tell me you are alive.”

He answered his letter only once in the last, but it wasn’t an apology or even a warm letter; it was instructions on family finance. Because Kant is a moral person, he needed to make sure family finances are fair.

Does he have other siblings? Yes. He had three younger sisters. And just like his brother, they got the exact same chilling treatment: he didn’t speak to them for 25 years, even though they all lived in the exact same city.

At least does he even have a friend? A big yes! Kant had a best friend named Joseph Green. But guess what? Green was even more rigid than Kant. Every single afternoon, Kant would walk over to Green’s house, and if Kant was five minutes late, Green wouldn’t open the door.

The real question: Why did he never marry?

Kant wasn’t completely closed off to the idea of romance; he reportedly considered marriage twice in his life, but he spent so much time logically calculating the financial responsibilities, the impact on his study schedule, and the pros and cons of partnership that by the time he decided to propose, one woman had already married someone else, and the other had moved away from Königsberg.

“When I could have used a wife, I could not support one; and when I could support one, I no longer needed any.” These are his own words.

So what is his philosophy?

Kant was born in Königsberg, Prussia, which is today Russia. Even though his lifestyle looks very modern, he lived in the 18th century. His philosophy is a paradox according to his personal life. He has books in philosophy, so it is hard to summarise them all, but his philosophy basically focused on two questions.

1. How do people know things?

Before Kant, philosophers argued over whether we learn through pure logic or raw experience. Kant stepped in and said they were both wrong. He believed we aren’t as objective as we think we are.

He made a massive distinction between two things: the Phenomena (the world as it appears to our human senses) and the Noumena (the world as it actually exists behind the scenes). We desperately want objective truth, but we can only access reality through our own subjective machinery.

2. What makes an action morally right?

“Don’t do things that would destroy society if everyone did them.” Immanuel Kant.

This is what makes it paradoxical, according to his personal life: a person who was so careful about people in absolute morality wasn’t warm even toward his own family.

Kant hated the idea that right and wrong could change based on how you feel or what the outcome is. He argued that an action is only good if it is done out of pure duty. He called this the Categorical Imperative.

His most beautiful rule within this framework was simple: Never use people as a tool to get what you want. Every human being has absolute, priceless value, and you must treat them as the final goal, never just a stepping stone. He built a moral fortress where human dignity is completely untouchable.

So what might have happened to this very moral person? Well, there isn’t a definite answer to this, but some historians think it might be related to his mother.

Kant adored his mother. She was highly intelligent, deeply religious, and she recognized early on that her son was a genius. She used to take young Kant on long walks through the fields, pointing at trees and stars, teaching him about nature and science. But she died when Kant was just 13 years old.

So maybe her death broke something in him. For the rest of his life, Kant held his mother up as an impossible ideal of beauty, intellect, and love. No regular woman could ever compete with her memory, which might be the deepest psychological reason he never married.

Kant had a ton of siblings, but he was his mother’s favorite. She recognized his intelligence early on, and she fought his father to ensure that Immanuel got to go to a prestigious, expensive academy, while his sisters were left behind to become uneducated domestic servants.

Unlike Sheldon, who eventually grows, falls in love, and learns to tolerate the messy chaos of his friends, Kant never lets the world break his programming.

Kant dies at age 79. His final words are a calm assessment of a finished task: “Es ist gut,” which means “It is good.”