At a ceremony marking the 300th anniversary of Kant’s birth, the chancellor said that Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine contradicted all of the philosopher’s fundamental principles. “Putin has not the slightest reason to invoke Kant, but the Putin regime still seeks to appropriate Kant and his work at virtually any cost,” Scholz said.
According to him, Kant’s ideas about human rights and human dignity, as well as his thoughts about war and peace, cannot be combined with war and what Putin practices in his country. “The Russian attacks and destruction in Ukraine symbolize a desire for destruction that few of us in Europe of the 21st century would consider possible because of its excess,” the politician added.
Earlier, Kaliningrad Oblast Governor Anton Alikhanov said Kant was “a Russian trophy, like everything else in Kaliningrad Oblast.”
What Putin said about the philosopher:
At the beginning of the year, Putin stated that among the philosophical writers Nikolay Berdyaev and Immanuel Kant were close to him.
Immanuel Kant was born in the capital of Prussia – Königsberg, now Kaliningrad.
