Beer Fight Or Just A Categorical Imperative Gone Wrong? Fight Erupts in Beer Line Over Kantian Difference

beer220px-Immanuel_Kant_(painted_portrait)Fights over beer are hardly unknown, particularly in the hard drinking circles of Russia (though vodka would appear the more likely fuel). However, police were called to a fight between two men standing in line over beer where one shot the other after arguing over . . . the writings of philosopher Immanuel Kant. It is clear that Kant and beer do not mix.


I much prefer this beer fight than those this weekend over football teams. I would much prefer undercover cop looking for intolerant philosophers to our current need to use undercover cops to seek out thugs at football games.

The men in the 20s started arguing over Kant when a fistfight erupted. One man then used a nonlethal pistol and shot the other man repeatedly. The second man was hospitalized.

The men might want another look at the categorical imperatives in Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785).

However, the shooter may have been motivated by Kant’s oft-cited Latin expression from Perpetual Peace: Fiat justitia, pereat mundus (“Let justice be done, though the world perish”), However, Kant translated this as “Let justice reign even if all the rascals in the world should perish from it.” Well, this may have been an effort to rid the world, or at least the beer line, of one rascal.

22 thoughts on “Beer Fight Or Just A Categorical Imperative Gone Wrong? Fight Erupts in Beer Line Over Kantian Difference”

  1. Bob Kauten 1, September 16, 2013 at 2:52 pm

    I kant take any more puns. You’re putting decartes before the horse…
    ==============================
    You can’t take any more whores?

    I am shocked ….

  2. I kant take any more puns. You’re putting decartes before the horse. I’ll consult my i-manual.

  3. “We were loud but happy drunks.”

    (-: (Thanks for the “Einstein Episode” clarification. It sounds a bit Seinfeldian…)

  4. ap,

    True enough, but I will have to say the Einstein Episode (as it is now known) didn’t involve a physical altercation. We’d both had so much to drink we had lost the ability to modulate vocal volume. We were loud but happy drunks.

  5. “It was not clear which of Kant’s ideas may have triggered the violence.”

    I’m gonna guess that the use of a “non-lethal pistol”, whatever that is, had something to do with a disagreement over Kant’s arguments regarding the death penalty.

  6. A categorical imperative would be one which represented an action as objectively necessary in itself, without reference to any other purpose.” -Immanuel Kant

    If only the beer line was not so long.

  7. “Philosophy, physics or politics plus beer equals trouble.” -Gene H.

    A slight modification:

    “Philosophy, physics or politics plus beer” and testosterone “equals trouble.”

  8. “Some people can handle their beer and some people Kant.” (Gene)

    Oh brother, Kant take this without my latte

  9. Where’s Bob, Esq.? :mrgreen:

    Like I’m one to talk.

    Me and a buddy got kicked out of a microbrewery for arguing over Einstein. 😀

    Philosophy, physics or politics plus beer equals trouble.

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