But, just looking around now at some posts about Kant's loopier suggestions (which, with respect to sex and masturbation I have noted here a few times before,) I have turned up this apparent quote:
A child that comes into the world apart from marriage is born outside the law (for the law is marriage) and therefore outside the protection of the law. It has, as it were, stolen into the commonwealth (like contraband merchandise), so that the commonwealth can ignore its existence (since it rightly should not have come to exist in this way), and can therefore also ignore its annihilation (p. 336).I see in the comments following that it has been speculated that his lack of empathy might have been caused by a tumour (seeing we are talking Kant, you should pronounce it in your mind like Arnie does in Kindergarten Cop):
This reminds me of Gazzaniga's take on Kant in The Mind's Past, page 121-1, where he speculates that Kant developed a massive left prefrontal tumor and then began writing his major works. This might begin to explain the lack of empathy concerning bastards, women and servants etc. Gazzaniga: "Is it possible that all those Kantians have saluted a man who was writing nonsense - a philosophy for those who do not have a normal cognitive and emotional system?".The attitude to children born out of wedlock has certainly improved since those centuries, even though just about everyone thinks it has gone way too far in the other direction now. Can't we just settle somewhere in the middle that we seem to have missed?
* More good grief!: I blogged about this exact linked post in 2010, even noting the brain tumour theory! I had a vague feeling I had read it before, but certainly had forgotten the bastards bit.
Can I be excused, with the wealth of material posted here, for forgetting what I have previously written sometimes?
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