A Palingenesis and Its Consequences 169If the Goeschen affair did not provide enough material about the liter¬
ary elite in Königsberg to exercise the wagging tongues, they soon had more:
Kanter's wife was unfaithful to her husband not long after. Kanter became
the laughing stock of Königsberg. As usual in such cases, advice was not
lacking. Krickende, who saw Kanter on one of his trips to Berlin, wrote to
Scheffner that "he should not take so many trips" because peculiar things
happened to "beautiful young women when their husbands were not at
home."^100 Hippel was less charitable: "This woman has shown the truth
to me: a stupid wife is still easier to seduce than an intelligent one, and
there is also more honor and more tranquillity with the latter."^101
If Kant had some interest in marriage before these scandals, he prob¬
ably lost all of it as a result of them. Maria Charlotta appears to have irre¬
versibly colored his view of women and marriage. This is certainly true of
Hippel. Thus he wrote in his Essay on Marriage of 1769: "In truth, only a
fool, a knave, or a priest are capable of marriage. The last one is used to be
bound by duties, the knave hopes that his wife is unfaithful, and the fool
believes that she is faithful."^102 He himself had decided a year earlier that
he would never get married. Indeed, his decision was so firm that he
thought, "this knot would hardly ever be untied."^103 Nor did Hippel ever
change his mind. Kant's reservations about marriage probably date back
to some time after this period. In March of 1770, he still appears to have
been willing. In any case, during that year Hippel wrote to Scheffner that he
had seen Kant, and that he was "not sure whether" Kant, having received
assurance that he would become the professor of mathematics, "might not
present himself as a bridegroom at any minute, for one says that he is not
entirely disinclined to dare to take this unphilosophical step."^104 But Kant
never did. Having reached the age of forty-six, having seen what happened
to some of his friends, he had ambiguous feelings about marriage. In any
case, we know from his lectures on anthropology that he believed "a younger
wife dominates an older husband and a younger husband an older wife."^105
Given the customs of the period, the prospects could hardly have seemed
propitious to him.
Kant formulated the maxim: "One mustn't get married." In fact, when¬
ever Kant wanted to indicate that a certain, very rare, exception to a maxim
might be acceptable, he would say: "The rule stands: One shouldn't marry!
But let's make an exception for this worthy pair." Rules and maxims could
have exceptions, and not just as far as marriage was concerned; but just
as only the exceptional marriage was for him an acceptable exception, so
maxims could be violated only rarely. Kant's phrase was borrowed from a