42 Kant: A Biography
We also have duties toward others, and the child should learn earlyReverence (Ehrfurcht) and respect for others... and it is very important to see to it
that the child practice these. For instance, when a child avoids another child that is
poorer, when it pushes the other away, or hits it, etc., one should not say: "Don't do
that, it hurts the other; have some sympathy, it is a poor child."^58
Instead, we must make the child aware that such behavior is contradictory
to the right of humanity.
In general, Kant felt that one should not make children feel sorry for
others so much as one should instill in them a feeling of duty, self-worth,
and confidence.^59 This is what he thought his own parents did for him.
Kant also emphasized a child's need of good examples, pointing out "for
a still undeveloped human being, imitation is the first determination of
his will to accept maxims that he afterward makes for himself."^60
Kant's remarks about his parents show that he considered them as ex¬
cellent examples. It is highly likely that Kant first learned of duties toward
himself and others by imitating them. He also felt that children should be
taught some of the concepts of religion — "only they must be more negative
than positive. To let them pray empty formulas serves no purpose and it
causes a wrong concept of piety. The true service of God consists in acting
in accordance with God's will, and that is what children must be taught."^61
Put another way, religious concepts must strengthen moral values, not the
other way around. In the Metaphysics of Morals he is still more explicit
about the separation of morality and religion. He recommends that the
moral catechism, not the religious one, should be the first to be presented
to school children, claiming that "it is important in this education not to
present the moral catechism mixed with the religious one ... or what is
worse yet: to have it follow upon the religious catechism."^62 It is doubtful
that the old Kant would have called the education he received from his
parents "ideal from the moral point of view," had religion and the "demand
for holiness" pervaded it in the way that Borowski suggests.^63
Yet Kant's moral philosophy might still have had deep roots in his early
childhood. The Kants were not just Pietists; since Kant's father was a mas¬
ter artisan and his parents members of a guild, they must have imparted to
their son the kind of moral disposition that was rooted in the ethos of the
Handwerk, of the guilds and artisans.^64 This ethos was characterized more
by a proud independence from king and lord, a spirit of self-determination
and self-sufficiency (even under the most adverse circumstances) than it
was by submissiveness and obedience to higher authority. The power of the