Kant, the Jews, and the Return to Israel: The Curious Case of Morris Cangallerie

This article concerns a mysterious figure who is mentioned by Kant in the handwritten text that serves as the basis for his last published work, the Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht of 1798. The name has been transcribed by the editor of the Akademie Ausgabe of the Anthropologie as ‘Morris Cangallerie,’ but I argue that this is a mistake. I proceed to offer my own alternative identification of the individual at issue, though this identification raises further questions about how Kant might be familiar with this figure and why he ultimately decided to remove the reference from the published text. Pursuing these questions takes us well beyond paleography into issues concerning Kant’s changing attitudes towards the Jewish people and religion, his careful curation of his own philosophical legacy, and even his late conception of the revolutionary character of his own philosophy.