Professor Kant's vocation: Educating on how to Live

Abstract

Kant was the first major philosopher of modernity to dedicate himself exclusively to teaching. From an early age, he worked as a private tutor, later becoming a Privatdozent at the university—earning fees based on the number of enrolled students—and eventually a full professor at the University of Königsberg, a position he held until nearly eight years before his death. This article examines Kant’s motivations as a teacher, focusing on the public announcements of his courses in the press, as well as his Lectures on Geography and Anthropology. These lectures are particularly significant because Kant employs the term “prudent”—the foundational principle of the pragmatic—to describe the capacity to live well with others by applying knowledge to the world. The article begins by outlining Kant’s teaching career, followed by an analysis (and translation of select passages) of his course advertisements in the press. This serves as a gateway to exploring the Lectures on Anthropology and Geography as forms of world knowledge, with an emphasis on their pragmatic characterization. The concluding section argues that education shapes and structures the human being. This education, understood as an encounter with others, prevents humanity from becoming cyclopean, instead granting it the two eyes that form the face of human coexistence.