by JLS
for the GC
The "Causes of death of famous philosophers", online, has for Grice: 'nonnatural causes'. So there.
The reference, re: J's comment in "Anna Karenina" was to Colin Radford in the Aristotelian Society: "How can we be moved by the fate of Anna Karenina?"
Writes Radford:
"As we watch Mercutio die the tears run
down our cheeks, but as O. K.
Bouwsma has pointed out (*),
the cigarettes and chocolates go
in our mouths too."
---
"If one is _moved_ one cannot surely
eat chocolates. Being moved to tears is
a massive response which tends to interfere
with doing much else."
----- I actually belong to an opera club -- who meets fortnightly, and we decide that it is illegal to sell chocolates in the opera house.
Radford goes on:
"Do we shed real tears for Mercutio?"
"Being moved by works of art involves us in
inconsistency and incoherence" -- argues Radford.
"Our response to Mercutio's death is
different from our response to the
death of the actor."
"The strength of our response is
proportionate to our 'belief' in
Mercutio. But we do not need not at
any time believe that he
is a real person to weep
for him. So, what is necessary in
other contexts, viz.
belief, for being
moved, is not necessary here, and,
all over again, how can we
be saddened by
and
cry over Mercutio's death knowing as we do
that when he dies no one really
dies?"
Radford leaves that as an open question, but a Griceian may want to provide an answer. It's conversational!
Radford:
"I'd reply. Some people cry over Mercutio's death
because they have nothing
better or more fruitful or more moral or more virtuous in
their lives to do. At least Shakespeare _wrote_ the thing
and has a business interest in it. At least the player (or actor) is
getting his ego patted, and his libido enhanced. But the silly
spectators have no redeem."
--- As an opera spectator, I agree. But then I'm MORE than an opera spectator. I am a TENOR! When I next see Loreley in a local production (opera by Catalani), I won't really be concerned about Walter (the tenor) and his suicide. I'll be keeping my ear on the performance, since, hey, I may have to MOVE an audience when I play it in the drawing-room! (Or not!). I am being a cynic!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
I'm moved by Romeo and Juliet, tho' it's not my fave play and seems a bit...melodramatic. Attach Prokofiev's overture---now, I'm moved.
ReplyDeleteMusic doesn't require the dramatic or narrative hocus pocus; ergo, musical effects are immediate (perhaps immediately nauseating with the latest jingleheimer or jungle beat blasting across the supermarket). So Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet or Beethoven's Eroica seem objective in a sense, whereas the drama requires the proverbial suspension of disbelief. A symphony might drag of course, but...Shakespeare...I don't know. Very long complicated scenes, and unless the actors are good, often confusing or bombastic. Macbeth moves me, and it's not melodramatic but sort of sublime--one's filled with terror in a sense (but not just like horror at a Steven King ghoulie flick). Same for Othello. So in that case, I would say the effects are ...perhaps close to Aristotle's chestnuts re tragedy, catharsis or something--the dramatist's magic (for lack of a better term) sort of creates the sensation of Macbeth's castle, if not old feudal scotland, or italian city-state in the case of Othello. Those are successful dramas--and rather psychological-- Fiction probably works in a similar fashion (thinking of say one's reaction to Heart of Darkness)
I have tried watching the Verdi adaptations but don't care too much for the music-- paraphrasing Twain on Wagner, the music's better than it sounds. I do like the "Drinking song"--La Traviata?? (the story a gloomy think however and sort of soap opera) Verdi however talented sounds good when he tries to imitate Mozart or something. Wagner....well, he's great about 5 minutes out of an half-hour.
Yes -- we HAVE to distinguish the arts. Grice is particular to use "utter" and "utterance" so VAGUELY (on purpose) that we can very naturally use Grice's jargon:
ReplyDelete'the artist's utterance' i.e. the artist's 'statement'.
----
My favourite Gricean authors are Gilbert and George. They present themselves as 'pieces of art' and they actually succeed, or did succeed back in 1967 when they presented "Underneath the arches" in a pub.
Then there's also Kosuth, whom I also love. He quotes from Ayer's "Language, Truth, and Logic", and argues that
'x is art'
is ANALYTIC, i.e. definitional, and ostensive.
----
But I DO Think that we should not rush to identify the 'art' with the 'nice' (or beautiful). I think 'nice' is a VERY important philosophical adjective and endorse Sibley's Griceain views on this:
'nice' is metalinguistic:
"x is nice" means that x is green and that green pleases you.
"Second-order" rather than 'metalinguistic' if you must.
The idea that 'art' and 'nice' are related is merely contingent.
The perlocutionary or other effects of an utterance seem totally irrelevant -- intended responses, on the other hand, are usually vacuous. Why would we care to read that Puccini meant to move us when he wrote Cavadarossi, "E lucevan le stelle" in Tosca. That is SO obvious!
--- Come to grits, I'm a Platonist in art theory and apply Grice's natural-nonnatural distinction and see art as meaning-N life ("Art imitates life" -- mimesis being the principle at hand).
Benedetto Croce, though a fascist!, held views on aesthetics that sort of anticipate some Gricean 'instrumentalism' or 'expressivism'.
There's also PLEASURE. 'nice' is nice, but 'pleasing' is pleasing. There is a Cambridge U. P. book on aesthetics -- results of a symposium -- that relate it to pleasure, and it's best to understand the artists's intention as an utilitarian desire to increase the pleasure of the addressee. Of course, that applies to Verdi, not to Stravinsky!
Interesting, especially since Plato (via Socrates' pronouncements in the Republic) seemed to be rather contra-aesthetics (as I alluded to in my somewhat ham-fisted essay re Russell/Hamlet/Napoleon). He allowed for some state music--probably martial, or ceremonial--but was not the aesthete or libertine many read him as.
ReplyDeleteAristotle on the other hand did allow for drama of a sort--primarily tragedy, concerning history, military heroes,etc--but read the Poetics carefully and you will note he does not really approve of comedy or satire (ie, satyr-plays). They were fairly conservative--not quite despots or fascists (tho some read them as such), but not touchy feely liberals. Augustine's comments on drama/theatre are somewhat interesting as well--he doesn't completely denounce the greeks but approved of the closing of the roman theatres (due mainly to the rise of the Christians...). Even non-stop porn and blood sport would get old after some time (de rigeur under a corrupt emperor).
Yes. I don´t know who invented the idea that "art" relates to beauty. In Greek sculpture, the idea IS about "beauty", of course, but the point is subtle. Suppose they find the Venus of Milo sexually appealing, or "nice". I.e. what "sexually appealing" first applies to is the original woman (called her "Martha of Milo", since Venus has a goddess ring to it). So what does the sculptor do: well, sculpt- is probably the wrong word. Originally Greek sculpture was bronze and moulded. So the scultpor (or figure-maker, in Greek -- the term "scultpor" is really "anthropic image maker" or something) moulds in bronze something that still creates, via some sublimation of some sort, the same "response": "appeal" -- drop the "sex" if you want.
ReplyDeleteThat´s quite a stretch from the Turner Prize winner, who offered as her utterance of art a crucifix inside a glass containing urine.
Helm is right: it would seem irresponsible of an artist to say, "Hey, I never meant to produce in you a reaction of disgust". It´s the NORMAL expectations that carry implicatures, etc.
---- I think the Romans were even less liberal than the Greeks. They objected to statues of Naked Figures. But yes, they enjoy a few Christians thrown to the tigers, too.
Plato, and Aristotle, were possibly very confused about aesthetics, as was Baumgarten and Kant ("Critique of Judgement"). I can´t see how "The Mona Lisa does things to me" can be universalisable.
I would think the FIRST philosopher to be more or less right about aeshtetics -- note that as per the tradition, this is "sensatio", i.e. belongs in the philosophy of perception, really) was Frank Sibley, who studied with Grice at Oxford.
I have both his volume and a tribute to him -- Essays on Sibley -- somewhere -- both edited by the Clarendon. Elton (ed.) published by Blackwell, is another good compilation along Griceian lines. It includes "Appraisal" by Hampshire and other pieces by Urmson and other philosophers of Grice´s generation or later. NOT Ryle, who was even Austin´s senior, and thus never allowed -- not that he asked -- to participate in the Play Group.
Benedetto Croce, though a fascist!, held views on aesthetics that sort of anticipate some Gricean 'instrumentalism' or 'expressivism'.
ReplyDeleteCroce apparently supported Mussolini for a year or two, but was not really a fascist--later he was considered an enemy of the blackshirts (this from wiki and other sources).
I have read a few excerpts of BC's writings on aesthetics, politics, history--he seems Hegelian, essentially, though with key differences (some of his writing may be found on the gutenberg e-texts site). He insists on imagination and intuition and disparages intellect, generally (tho' not exactly anti-rationalist, ie Nietzsche, or Freud, etc).
A quote: ""For Kant art was always "a sensible and imaged covering for an
intellectual concept." He did not look upon art as pure beauty without a
concept. He looked upon it as a beauty adherent and fixed about a
concept. The work of genius contains two elements: imagination and
intelligence. To these must be added taste, which combines the two..... Art
may even represent the ugly in nature, for artistic beauty "is not a
beautiful thing but a beautiful representation of a thing." ....
Kant is shut in with intellectualist barriers.
While I understand and am somewhat sympathetic with Croce's view, I disagree with him here, and actually respect the Kantian attempt at synthesis, of form and concept, of imagination and intellect (which also seems slightly ...hellenistic. probably more Aristotelian than platonic..). Expression is important, but so is Theme, concept, ideas. (This is just brief...). I'm not a capital I Idealist but generally side with Kant over Hegel....
Good points. It's all starting to remind me of R. V. Scruton. HE too has a good book or two on art. I prefer when he writes about sexual perversions in "Sexual desire", though, citing Grice!
ReplyDeleteBut in "Art and understanding", which I must have somewhere from a St. Augustine press reprint, he is pretty serious about Grice and aesthetics.
In fact, the Grice citation by Scruton is in the "Sexual desire" thing, not his books on art.
---- Re: Croce and Grice, I should re-read your good quote by Croce on Kant. I was referring I guess to the more accessible Croce that one learns about from the writings of Collingwood?
--- I must have, somewhere, Collingwood, "The idea of language", which is, I think, a part of his "The idea of history". It looks all Crocean to me.
Of course, if one reseraches into the good philosophy of language as was practiced in England by non-academic types like James Harris, or Horne-Tooke, you HAD to be an intentionalist! So everybody is anticipating Grice somehow!
I liked your refs. to Croce on the 'ugly'. Indeed, there's also the 'sublime' which is more like the awe-ful. As when the king of England first visited the new St. Paul's cathedral, and uttered, "Awful". Apparently, he meant 'awesome,' i.e. 'sublime' -- or something.
While I respect Scruton's...scholarly acumen or something, I don't generally agree with him. Politicially he's a bit to the right of Winnie Churchill, headed towards Goebbels...
ReplyDeleteLet's not forget Kant himself, while not quite PC was not a rightist or zealot either. He kept a bust of Rousseau on his desk--one hopes he would have opposed the nazis (and stalinists as well)--Uncle Bertie says somewhere in his History of WestPhil (glib but still helpful, regardless of what so many hackademics say) that Kant was mostly liberal, not an arch nationalist, or Hegelian (in the rightist-heroic sense). Obvious platitudes perhaps, but Scruton tends to turn his favorite thinkers into conservative heroes...
Yes. I learned of Scruton, of course, from the Royal Institute Philosophy "Practical Philosophy" volume, where he produced a shorter version of his "Sexual desire" and then I HAD to pass a seminar on I forget what and I said (to myself), "Rather than to study silly theories on silly subject-matters, I rather pursue the 'erotic' along the lines of Grice as put forward by Scruton (in "Sexual Desire") and T. Nagel (in "Sexual perversions", Journal of Philosophy). Their use of Grice is Ovidian: it's the mutual recognition that makes for arousal, gaze, and so forth. For Nagel, a sexually pervert one is one who does not recognise the 'other' as a Gricean conversational partner, if you can believe that! (I love Nagel).
ReplyDeleteScruton WAS, believe it or not, educated at Oxford, but he stayed mainly in London before he got this lovely country house in Wiltshire.
Yes, Kant should also be read and re-read. But surely I find his MORAL theory hard to digest per se to want to buy his objectivity of aesthetic judgments into the bargain!
----
Yes, Kant should also be read and re-read. But surely I find his MORAL theory hard to digest per se to want to buy his objectivity of aesthetic judgments into the bargain!
ReplyDeleteYou said you were a Humean, right JL? The categorical imperative's a rather strict maxim for anyone, especially Humeans... I approach Kantian ethics via Rawls, and in some sense I think the CI sound (but not necessary), as in it's always prudent to consider the universalization of some policy or act (at least of a serious sort...like say whether to lie about WMDs or not...), and the effects of said policy on a "kingdom of ends"...so in a sense the CI's crypto-consequential anyway.
Many rightist college boys still love the Humester because of his amorality, arguably....tho' having read a bit of Hume . I believe many misread him as a ...Marquis-like nihilist when he --at least the aged, diseased Hume-- gave to poorhouses, befriended Ben Franklin, and at times even had words for the Torys and royals (including Chas II). Jefferson on the other hand considered one of the most sinister men who ever lived... (tho' even some irony there...perhaps the aged Hume had actually...opposed the slavers, and supported abolition in the states (as did Franklin) which Jefferson could not quite do?? scuzi the Americana).
Yes. Home is a case. His surname was "Home" but he rightly changed it to "Hume" since that's how it was pronounced. Actually, my teacher on this, M. Costa, was a Humean strict -- and she did write, extensively on Hume's theory of passions, so you are right -- having known . Costa well, Hume would NOT support Marquis of Sade's nihilism and stuff. Hume's moral theory can be pretty boring in parts.
ReplyDeleteYou are right about approaching Kant via Rawls. I tend to approach the universalisability via a suggestion by Baker in her "Do one's motives have to be poor, ---" sorry, "pure". In PGRICE, the Grice festschrift ed. by Grandy and Warner. It's more Prichardian than anything else, and trades on Prichard, on motivation and interest and duty, as recently (by then) repr. by Urmson for the Oxford U. P.
Grice wants to say that a maxim is universalisable if it can be the object not just of your 'kingdom-of-end' willing. You have to WILL the object of the maxim, but you also have to will to will the object of the maxim, and will to will to will the object of the maxim, and so on ad infinitum. This should block any non-universalisable sneaky drawback. This allows to be able to LIE about WMD on occasion -- when my Auntie asks if I have NOT have them, for surely you kant prove a negative --, but would make a general allowance of lying a rather otiose thing (unless you ARE the "Cry-Wolf" little boy in the meadow whose lying abilities struck back with him -- with two vengeances.
well, a person..or politician...might Machiavelli-ize, and then universalize lying, or the policies of the mafia, or totalitarianism , or whatever, but Kant's point, or perhaps the implication of the CI, would be that Mach. begets Mach, more or less. Omerta! (a difficult point, at least for the theory. Obviously people get away with "evil" actions. So is "don't get caught" a maxim too? Or...perhaps Kant was ultimately suggesting something religious)
ReplyDeleteThat sort of Mach. 101 happened with the Iraqi war and the BushCo cronies--had clear evidence of WMDs been found some military action might have been justified. Sans WMDS--but actual misrepresentations thereof--the war looks pretty aggressive if not imperialistic and ...wrong, even...evil.
Yes. "Don't get caught" SEEMS like a maxim. For one, it's negative. Moses has all the things in his catalogue (decalogue) as, "Thou shalt NOt...', which fits the bill with "Thoug shalt not be cotte".
ReplyDeleteWMDs involves the proving of a negative. It sounded bold to the logician in me that it had been proved that no weapons of mass destruction existed. It seems far easier to prove that they exist! (even if one may have to machiavelically 'fabricate' them? -- the latter bit is uncalled for).
There is this idiom, 'you cannot get away with murder' or with 'it'. So a lot of what a moral theory is supposed to replace is that sort of Law of Talion (a tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye). Surely a man without a tooth or eye is not yet a murdered man, but you get my point.
There is something UNNATURAL about ethics, in the good sense that it operates on our pre-rational, natural impulses, or the bad impulses among the wicked among us.
It would seem that in a society of totally harmless and ethically pure individuals no legal or modal code would be necessary? Or would Grice still try and reconstruct it rationally from the behavour of such saints?
actually a deontological view of the CI raises another point (which you are probably aware of), and lying brings it out--prevarication's wrong because...it's wrong! regardless of the measurable consequences.
ReplyDeleteThe point being that Truth is "better" (far better for Kant, presumably) than falsehood, ie non-truth. Now, I think Kant holds to a metaphysical realism of a type (as evidenced in the Deduction)--perhaps some expert Kantian could correct me (like that dread scribe Pseudonoma)--for IK, moral truths exist, or are bindning in some noumenal realm (and platonists and many theologians would agree). Quite odd to many secularists, but it seems the CI ONLY makes sense assuming that noumenal, immaterial realm holds (or in the current jargon, possible worlds, even ...parallel); otherwise, any moral maxims would not really matter, in brief. As like that hack Nietzsche barked, more or less (as Hume does as well, really)--what Quatsch! Seeing is believing. yet if some monistic naturalism doesn't hold, then Kant's points on deontology could...be accurate in some sense. That's one reason I hesitate to join the likes of Dawkins & Co, especially when the physicists a few doors down from the evolutionary biology types start discussing possible worlds...
Dunno. Grice dedicates the most interesting bit of his Immanuel Kant lectures to sort of boil down the categorical imperative to a maxim or counsel of prudence, so dunno. Interstingly, Grice would often lecture on "Happiness". Warner writes an apology on Grice's behalf to the effect that "Happiness" -- the last chapter in Grice's "Aspects of reason" (Oxford, 2001) does not belong there, since it was never part of the lectures on reasoning at Stanford 1977.
ReplyDeleteBut oddly, I find a VERY good connection. For it's all about Grice's favourite philosopher (NOT foolosopher): Ariskant (aka Kantotle). For Kant DOES state that the maxims can be seen as:
"If you want to be HAPPY, do x"
--- In some cases, hubby may deduce that it's better to say, "You look GORGEOUS in that dress" than tell the honest truth and face an unhappy occasion at the opera.
well, Aristotle's ethics are not Kant's (--and not Plato's, or....St. Augustine's for that matter). While I respect Nico.Ethics, I'd say, Ari. was sort of a pragmatist (and remembering that this is merely blogspeak, not exactly Oxbridge, or to be published in J-stor, under one of those metaphysical insiders' sections ). Aristotle's like a Barry Goldwater of the ancient world--he affirms Virtue, valor, honor, etc. But he's not so concerned with Justice and Truth, or ethical objectivity in the ...grand metaphysical or theological sense. Or so it seems.
ReplyDeleteKant's not merely discussing moral passions, virtues, utilitarian happiness, etc., but...something like the Absolute. His view of Justice was..."sub species aeternitatis"...agree or not, but that's the context.
Yes -- but this IS Oxbridge-- Just kidding. In fact, it's OX. I remember talking to Schiffer -- "You have spent so much time in Oxford. You never ventured to discuss with any Cambridge philosopher. What was your opinion of philosophy at Cambridge while you were at Oxford". I remember his answer distinctly, over a glass of whisky, "There was no contest". Ah well.
ReplyDeleteYes, Aristotle is a pragmatist. He also justified slavery! His views on slaves are coloured by, er, ... slaves as they existed back then. They were NOT Greeks, or something. When he means, 'rational human' he means "Greek". He COULD be biased!
----- Kant, as you say, is a different animal. I suppose it's the Lutheran in him. Dunno. The Germans, on the whole, respect one law too many! (and he was born a Russian literally). There is this passage in J. K. Jerome, "Three men in a bummell", where the narrator meets a lady in a German park who is utterly confused as to what to do with those written regulations. "You should take THIS way". "But it leads me to a direction I don't want to go". "That is as it may, but it leads you to the direction where you OUGHT to want to go." That's Kant forya!
---- Judith Baker was Grice's student at Berkeley and she holds (c) for many things 'with Grice' -- and she is trying to make sense of the stuff and come up with a book or something. "Reflections on morals" should be the title. The unpublications of Grice in the Grandy/Warner festschrift also list a book-length thing called "Kant's ethics", and indeed there are PILES of stuff on Kant (mainly for his courses at Berkeley) by Grice in the Grice Collection at Berkeley.
I suppose the Kantian bug must have gotten to Grice later in his career, though. I would have thought that "Ethica Nichomachea" was second nature to him, from his Clifton days and for having had Hardie as his tutor at Corpus Christi -- for his first in Greats --. A sprinkling of Kant would have been ok -- but Grice always relied on the Abbott translation, unlike Strawson (Grice's student) who in his "Bounds of sense" relies on Strawsonglish, rather.
Kant, as you say, is a different animal. I suppose it's the Lutheran in him. Dunno. The Germans, on the whole, respect one law too many! (and he was born a Russian literally). There is this passage in J. K. Jerome, "Three men in a bummell", where the narrator meets a lady in a German park who is utterly confused as to what to do with those written regulations. "You should take THIS way". "But it leads me to a direction I don't want to go". "That is as it may, but it leads you to the direction where you OUGHT to want to go." That's Kant forya!
ReplyDelete--Kant was born and lived his entire life in Koenigsberg (must find me umlauts), did he not, which was Prussia--the capital, I believe. That may be Russia now (temporarily, according to Germans..), that is, after the soviets grabbed it on their bloody march to Berlin in 1945. But was traditionally Prussian/saxon--indeed the very seat of the Teutonic knights. Oops. History.
--Lutheranism may be relevant. I don't think Kant was that orthodox, but...probably a believer. I believe he had a run-in or two with religious--and political authorities. He doesn't accept traditional theological arguments.... Yet somewhere he does say something like we should all pause to reflect on the Design argument or words to that effect...
--and yes Kant wanted to prove obligations. Is that worse than saying obligations don't hold, ala Hume, except what our passions sort of direct us to? Not sure. I don't think Kant succeeds completely...but does show the possibility of objective ethics..obviously at a ordinary level, people do say, honor your promises, or contracts (or they say...don't get caught..what Humeanism really leads to. As does Ayn Rand. Cheneyism!). Perjury's not just ethically wrong, but a crime, as is failing to carry out a contract. And Kantian ethics still are considered. Rawls for one example (tho' he proceeds in quite a different manner). In a pragmatic sense, humans--at least sane ones-- may be better off with Kant's CI, duty, Ought, even a kingdom of ends, than Hume's "don't get caught."
Yes. Point taken about Russian not being a Kant, or Kant not being a Russian (by inversion) (I guess I was considering Russell´s dark eyes, and HE was born in Wales -- if that´s not a stereotype I don´t know what is! But I LOVED those dark eyes! -- compared to his nose, that is).
ReplyDeleteNow, Kant was, strictly, a Scot. His name was written, and pronounced, "Cant". But the Germans, up there in Koenigsberg, would pronounce that as "Sant", which offended him.
---- Yes. Kant is perhaps better than Home (pronounced "Hume"), who still thought there was a lot of cant being said about morality...
Twat's that? I kun't hear you.
ReplyDeleteYes, Sir JL IK was part Scot, alas. Read his bio., eh abridged bio carefully and one notes certain.......tensions, politically and otherwise. I suspect the prussian authori-tays of the time considered a bit of a rabble rouser, possibly even.....a jacobin, or at least sympathetic to the Rev.
My point on Russell may have been a bit generalized but merely meant to say he wasn't the usual blue-eyed anglo-saxon (more like...welsh gaelic). Eye-color's a rather critical factor these days. On Ocularity-ness
Yes. My favourite Welshman is Christopher Isherwood, of sorts. He has some pretty general generalisations about them, the Welsh. For one, his being Welsh (born in High Lane, Cheshire -- and it´s the Bradshaw that accounts for his dominant Welshness, I think, versus the recessive Saxonity of the Issyvood) explained his falling (in love?) for the Hun!
ReplyDeleteWho are NOT Hun.
"Let´s not be beastly to the Hun", as Coward reminds us in this ditty banned by the BBC.
What Kant had was a good first name: "Immanuel". Grice was so enamoured with that that he punned on it. I too, in a paper that got published in the proceedings of a conference on "Contemporary Philosophy". I called my piece, "The Conversational Immanuel", but I don´t think I knew what I meant. Grice´s pun refers to a "manual" that pirots (his critters, which are like Locke´s "intelligent, rational parots", only different, and which karulise elatically) complile.
"We may without impropriety refer to this highly general manual for the direction of life that each pirot compliles as an "Immanuel"".
Chapman in a piece of naive exegesis writes, "The pun may be on Kant".
Actually Chapman has it good here. She spent quite some time with the Grice papers, and she found a statement of account from a bank on whose overleaf Grice had written, "with his usual inelligible hand", "Surely Moses must have brought something more from Sinai than the 10 comms" (or words). So yes, there is this "eschatological" thing.
I would think it was perhaps Kant´s MOTHER who suggested "Immanuel" as a good Christian first name. It means something in Hebrew. And not in vain, "Immanuel" is a favourite Xmas hymn.
I´m never so inspired. Nor is my mother. She once rescued a cat from the storm, whom she called "Moses" (Hebrew for "rescued from the storm"). Nine months later, Moses was regaling us a full litter and she was appropriately re-baptised "Mosesa".