Mecca for Kant Scholars: Foreign Participants at the International Kant Congress

87 foreign scholars are participating in the International Kant Congress, taking part in the plenary presentations and thematic panels.

Professor Jürgen Stolzenberg of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (Germany) gave a presentation titled “Kant on Enthusiasm”, which provoked a lively discussion among the audience. Pablo Muchnick, Professor of Philosophy at Emerson College (USA), gave a presentation on “Judgement of the Inner Judge: On the Genesis of Kant’s Essay on Theodicy”. The academic is the author of several books on Kant, the winner of various national and international scholarships and awards, and has served as Vice-President and President of the North American Kant Society.

The US professor came to Kaliningrad for the first time, admitting that he was very much looking forward to this visit.

This is my Mecca. Kaliningrad is a beautiful city. There is a lot of propaganda about Russia in the US, but I was very happy to get such a great opportunity to visit the city of Kant.
said Pablo Muchnik.

The third day of the Congress started with a plenary presentation by the physicist Eckart Stein (Dr. habil., Germany). The researcher is in Kaliningrad for the second time — the first time he visited it 8-9 years ago — and admitted that he likes the region.

At the congress, Dr Stein presented a talk on “The Fundamental Importance of Kant for 21st-Century Physics”, which also generated a great deal of interest among the international speakers.

“Above all, Kant was also a physicist. As a young man, he had studied Newton and Leibniz. And so he was familiar with all the physical concepts. Every physicist should know philosophy, and every philosopher should know physics, because it’s something you touch and measure and that changes your life, and philosophy gives you a deeper understanding of life. Therefore, philosophy shouldn’t be a kind of ephemeral thing with no connection to the real world. And physics shouldn’t just do something without thinking about it. Kant unites us all, physicists and philosophers alike.”

“Above all, Kant was also a physicist. As a young man, he had studied Newton and Leibniz. And so he was familiar with all the physical concepts. Every physicist should know philosophy, and every philosopher should know physics, because it’s something you touch and measure and that changes your life, and philosophy gives you a deeper understanding of life. Therefore, philosophy shouldn’t be a kind of ephemeral thing with no connection to the real world. And physics shouldn’t just do something without thinking about it. Kant unites us all, physicists and philosophers alike.”