Joe Biden may want to make his campaign slogan... dare we say it... "Yes we Kant."
On Tuesday, the former vice president made his second campaign stop of the 2020 election cycle, deciding at some point that Iowa needed a dose of German philosophy to fully understand his platform. Biden dug out a quote about the dignity of work during that event, attributing it not to Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), but to Immanuel Kant.
“It’s a strange thing to be quoting Kant at a political event, but…?” Joe Biden says, for the second day quoting from the German philosopher Immanuel Kant.
— Matt Viser (@mviser) April 30, 2019
Of course, that's far from Biden's only display of Kantian prowess. In his first campaign rally on Monday, Biden also delivered a paraphrased Kant line to a Pennsylvania crowd, saying "people should never be treated as a means to an end, but an end in themselves." Flash back just a few days before that, and you'll find that Biden gave a very similar statement to the hosts of ABC's The View.
Joe Biden on reaching working-class voters: "We have to restore dignity to work. We have to restore dignity to the way we treat people...We treat them like they're a means to an end." https://t.co/0ZmgnQfjrn pic.twitter.com/85vAzVe9z7
— The View (@TheView) April 26, 2019
With a tad more Google searching, one can find an even earlier recorded instance of Biden sharing some Kantian wisdom. At the beginning his book Promise Me, Biden relays Kant's "rules for happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for," which NPR took as a hint in 2017 that Biden would eventually run for president again.
