"Kant is a moron" graffitied on the philosopher's home

2015-03-20T20:01:00-04:00

Russian police say they're looking for the intellectually minded miscreants who graffitied "Kant is a moron"—along with a flower and heart—on the philosopher's home outside Kaliningrad. With Arthur Schopenhauer dead for 155 years, however, authorities start off with few strong leads.

The derelict house does look like an easy target for vandalism, but apparently the philosopher never even actually lived inside. The Atlantic points out that the local structure Kant lived in was destroyed sometime in the 19th century, and the tagged building was in fact a new one built on the same site. Which, apparently, relieves The Atlantic of treating this as a preservationist issue, and instead gives free reign to cram in as many of Kant's philosophical principles as possible. See below:

"They say no reason, pure or otherwise, was given for the crime."
"Even the timing of the crime is unclear—journalists discovered the note, at once crude and rather refined, while exploring Kant's derelict home."
"But for those who would reclaim the discipline's more raucous reputation of the past, the graffiti is perhaps a positive sign, and maybe the first salvo in a war between Situationists and Enlightenment thinkers. Indeed, a critic of Kant's ideas might feel a categorical imperative to tak...

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"Kant is a moron" graffitied on the philosopher's home