Kant's Christian Name

This guilty Tom Turkey has just finished ravishing an infinitely respectable Hen Turkey. Without wishing to disappoint anyone I don't think Immanuel Kant was ever arrested for anything. But, while Kant was baptized Emanuel Kant, he changed his name to Immanuel Kant. The vague answer to the question Why bother? is that his name change had something to do with him being a young Lutheran in a Lutheran Sunday School that insisted on reading the central parts of the Old Testament in Hebrew. All kinds of sensible reasons for doing that, including an overwhelming sense of guilt. Oddly enough when I was kicked off Facebook for Jay walking with intent to whistle, I changed my name from Tim to Timothy, in the hope that I might open a new, perhaps more Christian account. But, and this is just an opinion, you'd sort of think Kant had better things to do than go to the effort of formally replacing an Em with an Imm. Back then in the mid to late 1700's, long before the Zuckster and his odious sycophantic clones repeatedly effed with us all, it was probably easier for a person to tinker with his or her name. In the end if Emanuel Kant had been arrested, and maybe tried in a court of Star Chamber, spent time in the stocks, there's a good chance Baxter might not lump him in the same addendum as Plato. There again there's still hope. Emmanuelle is the female version of Immanuel, meaning "God Is With Us". And Emmanuelle Arsan was the pen name of the novelist who wrote Emmanuelle, a book that became a series of somewhat spicy feature films that inspire hundreds of millions.