The Elegant Magister 117nerungen an eine Freundin") and for having tried to educate her as a young
woman through pleasant conversation. That Kant sent her this poem by
Wieland gives us at least some idea of how he felt about her.^84 Nor is it in¬
significant that the poem is by Wieland, whose poems are uncharacter¬
istically witty, lucid, and light for a German of any century. This poem
belongs to those that are characterized by an enthusiastic and sentimental
Platonizing morality that emphasized abstinence rather than fulfillment.
Wieland himself later felt that this high-strung abstinence had hurt him
more than a cruder form of debauchery would have. How Kant felt about
this we can only surmise. His elegant conduct suggests sentiments similar
to those expressed by the early Wieland. The poem's most important re¬
minder to the girlfriend is to remember and contemplate the "holy thought"
that she is carrying "the Godhead's image: reason" and the "supreme power
to know the truth."
When Heilsberg says that Kant was "no great devotee (Verehrer) of the
female sex," he did not mean that Kant looked down on women or that he
was a misogynist, but rather that he was not someone for whom sexual
exploits were important as a means of proving himself. "He felt marriage
to be a desire and to be a necessity," but he never took the final step. Once
there was "a well brought up and beautiful widow from somewhere else,
who visited relatives." Kant did not deny that she was a woman with whom
he would have loved to share his life; but "he calculated income and expenses
and delayed the decision from one day to the next."^85 The beautiful widow
visited other relatives, and she married there. Another time he "was touched
by a young Westphalian girl," who had accompanied a noble woman to
Königsberg. He was "pleased to be with her in society, and he let this be
known often," but again he waited too long. He was still thinking of mak¬
ing an offer of marriage when she reached the Westphalian border.^86
After that, he never thought of marriage again. Neither did he appreci¬
ate suggestions from friends in that regard, preferring not to go to a party
if there were likely to be exhortations in this direction. During his early
years, marriage would indeed have been difficult for financial reasons. He
himself is said to have quipped that when he could have benefited from be¬
ing married, he could not afford it, and when he could afford it, he could
no longer have benefited from it. He was not alone in this. Many a scholar
in eighteenth-century Germany had to endure the same fate and live the life
of a celibate simply because he could not support a wife and children. Some
found rich widows, who could support them, but they were exceptions.
Whether Kant ever really understood women is an open question. That