I Kant even this Season

Immanuel Kant in a Santa outfit and hat, arms folded and tangled in a string of fairy lights, next to the words I Kant even this Season. It is a pun on I can’t even – the universal sigh of December – borrowed by the most dutiful philosopher in history, who would still insist you show up for the family lunch out of duty.

In German Kant is said with a short, open a, roughly kahnt – close to the British can’t, which is the whole joke. In American English you will also hear it rhyme with pant. Either way it is one syllable, and the T is clearly pronounced.

It is the supreme principle of morality in Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785). Its best-known form says – act only according to that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law. Another formulation says to treat humanity, in yourself and others, always as an end and never merely as a means. Unlike hypothetical imperatives, it binds regardless of what you want.

For Kant an action has moral worth only when it is done from duty – out of respect for the moral law – not merely in line with duty or from inclination. His example in the Groundwork is an honest shopkeeper who does not cheat customers only because honesty is good for business; he acts rightly but without moral worth. Visiting relatives because you must, not because you want to, is in that sense very Kantian.

No. In his essay On a Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy (1797) Kant argues that even when a murderer at the door asks where your friend is hiding, you may not lie. Truthfulness is a duty to everyone, and a lie damages the trust that all rights rest on. Many readers, Kantians included, find this too strict – which makes saying you love an unwanted present a genuine ethical dilemma.

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was a German philosopher from Königsberg, the city he hardly ever left. His three Critiques – of Pure Reason (1781), Practical Reason (1788) and Judgement (1790) – reshaped epistemology, ethics and aesthetics. He is regarded as the central thinker of the Enlightenment and was famous for a daily routine so regular that neighbours were said to set their clocks by his walks.

Sapere aude is Latin for dare to know, or dare to be wise. The phrase comes from the Roman poet Horace, but Kant made it the motto of the Enlightenment in his essay Answering the Question, What Is Enlightenment? (1784) – have the courage to use your own understanding. For Kant, enlightenment is humanity’s exit from its self-incurred immaturity.

In the Prolegomena (1783) Kant writes that David Hume’s analysis of cause and effect first interrupted his dogmatic slumber. Hume showed that causation cannot be proved from experience alone; Kant’s answer, worked out in the Critique of Pure Reason, was that the mind itself supplies concepts such as causality, so we know things as they appear to us, not as things in themselves.

Yes – it works as an ugly Christmas sweater alternative for anyone who has read some philosophy, and the pun lands even with those who have not. It suits philosophy students, teachers and the colleague who sighs through every office party. The design comes as a sweatshirt, premium hoodie, classic T-shirt, mug and sticker.