Who's Afraid of Immanuel Kant?

Philosophers are noted for their exquisite parties—replete with red wine and raconteuring, Ferrero Rocher pyramids and reminiscences of Frank Ramsey. The tradition of the philosophical party goes back to Plato’s Symposium, with its eloquent speeches about love—an occasion recreated, more or less, at the reception of every philosophy colloquium.

Philosophers offer more than conversation, though: they cook. When he retired to Edinburgh in 1769, David Hume wrote to a friend:

I live still, and must for a twelvemonth, in my old House in James's Court, which is very chearful and even elegant, but too small to display my great Talent for Cookery, the Science to which I intend to addict the remaining Years of my Life; I have just now lying on the Table before me a Receipt for making Soupe à la Reine, copy'd with my own hand. For Beef and Cabbage (a charming Dish), and old Mutton and old Claret, no body excels me. I make also Sheep head Broth in a manner that Mr Keith speaks of it for eight days after, and the Duc de Nivernois would bind himself Apprentice to my Lass to learn it.

It may come as no surprise that Hume was a convivial host. But Immanuel Kant was, too. Contrary to stereotype—which pictures Kant as a joyless automaton, rigidly stuck on his daily routine—Kant enjoyed wine, billiards, and fancy clothes. On occasion, we are told, he drank so much he couldn’t find his way home. Kant flirted with women, told excellent jokes, and hosted much-loved dinner parties.

Such were the revelations, for me, of Manfred Kuehn’s 2001 biography. What I learned much later is that Kant defends his lifestyle, as part of the “highest ethico-physical good,” in Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. “Inclination to pleasurable living and inclination to virtue are in conflict with each other,” Kant writes. But the conflict can be resolved in the “civilized bliss” of the dinner party.

Kant’s theory is expounded by Alix Cohen in an essay on “The Ultimate Kantian Experience,” which quotes the Anthropology:

The good living which still seems to harmonize best with virtue is a good meal in good company (and if possible with alternating companions) … this little dinner party … must not only try to supply physical satisfaction—which everyone can find for himself—but also social enjoyment for which the dinner must appear only as a vehicle.  

Kant is full of sound advice for hosts: when planning a menu, one should make “decisions with the tastes of his guests in mind, so that everyone finds something to his own liking; such a procedure yields a comparatively universal validity.” As to drinking: wine is conducive to wit and an open heart, unlike beer which makes us boorish, and hard liquor which induces silent reverie.

Dinner party conversation promotes self-mastery, a “step towards virtue,” and love of the good, to which we are won over by love of “the illusion of the good”—that is, politeness. This is Kant’s version of Diotima’s ladder, replacing love for a beautiful boy with love of etiquette as the first rung on our ascent towards the Forms.

The party itself must be well-planned. No distracting music and no competitive games, which promote self-interest, not virtue. Start with the news of the day, before “arguing back and forth” about it, and end the evening with humour. Kant has rules for conversation; don’t be dogmatic; don’t “jump from one subject to another” but talk until a topic is exhausted.

If you follow this guide, you, too, could have the ultimate Kantian experience.

Now, I love dinner parties as much as the next philosopher, if not more. And I appreciate Kant’s insight. But I’m not wholly convinced. It’s a professional hazard for a certain sort of philosopher to want to prove apodictically that their taste is objectively correct. Cohen promises not just to explain Kant’s view but “to argue that dinner parties are in fact the ultimate experience for us, human beings.” Yet the argument eludes me.

Which makes me wonder… could I be missing the joke? Maybe Kant is engaging in the jest that comes at the end of the dinner party, the bit where philosophers take turns at comedic self-parody. Is his argument in the Anthropology demonstrative less in the mode of logical proof than of illustrative performance? Is he giving us a taste of the joys of the philosophical dinner party, from which we can perceive, directly, that it is the ultimate experience?

An elaborate argument for dinner parties, accompanied by rigorous rules for having them, would be a funny thing for a philosopher to declaim, at pompous length, at the end of a dinner party. Kudos to Kant for publishing it in a book.