Joseph Green (merchant)

Joseph Green (* 1727 in Kingston upon Hull ; † June 27, 1786 in Königsberg ) was a trader from England who lived and worked in Königsberg for most of his life and was a close friend of Immanuel Kant . The merchant Robert Motherby was one of these friends .

Live and act

Joseph Green was a merchant who made the acquaintance of Immanuel Kant between 1764 and 1765. He traded in grain, herrings , coal and manufactured goods . Green led a very structured daily routine and is also said to have been very educated. He was an excellent expert on the works of David Hume . His house, it was built in the English style, was in Juditten .

Immanuel Kant had with him u. a. the " Critique of Pure Reason " (1781) discussed, which both worked side by side. Immanuel Kant and Joseph Green met frequently and regularly. Green also took care of Kant's cash reserves, so that Kant successfully invested his fortune in Green's company in the last few years of his life. Along with Motherby, Green was one of Immanuel Kant's most trusted friends. At Green's request, Robert Motherby came to Königsberg around 1751 at the age of eighteen, because the English merchant was looking for a reliable young Englishman as an assistant who, because he remained childless, could become a future partner - from 1754 - and also became after his death , Green, Motherby & Co.

Immanuel Kant entered into correspondence with Emanuel Swedenborg , with whose ideas he dealt with. In the book Dreams of a Ghost Seer (1766), they prompted him to find Swedenborg as a “candidate of the hospital” and “Archphantast among all fantasists”, who dragged him away with his reports from the world beyond death into a “land of milk and honey of metaphysics ” want to discuss it critically. The work Arcana caelestia (1749–1756) was described by Kant as “eight quarto volumes full of nonsense”. In order to get an impression of his (mental) health, Kant asked his friend Joseph Green to visit Swedenborg. Green reported that there was nothing unusual about his health.

effect

The extraordinary punctuality of Joseph Green to Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel model for his comedy The man at the clock. (1766).

literature

• Deirdre N. McCloskey: The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce. University of Chicago Press, 2010, ISBN 0-226-55667-0 , pp. 265 f.
• Manfred Kuehn: Kant. A Biography. Cambridge University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-521-52406-7 , pp. 154 f. ( Online , PDF)
• Karl Vorländer : Immanuel Kant's life. Felix Meiner, Leipzig 1911, pp. 61–64

Web links

• Hans-Peter Gensichen: How gay was Kant? Forum, March 2004, pp. 43-47
• Immanuel Kant. A working aid with lecture and readings for Immanuel Kant events.

Individual evidence

1. ^ The Ostpreußenblatt. Article East Prussian memorial days in June. Volume 5, Volume 1, June 5, 1950, p. 169
2. ↑ Kantslife. Registration under the year 1786
3. ↑ Kant Biography Lorenz Grimoni; Martina Will: Königsberger Citizen Letter. No. 62/2004 ( Memento of the original dated April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ Manfred Kühn: Kant: a biography. CH Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-50918-5 , p. 185 f.
5. ↑ Hans-Peter Gensichen (2013) on Johann Friedrich Gensichen (1760–1807), pp. 36–47
6. ↑ Karl Vorländer: Immanuel Kant. The man and the work. Chapter dealing with merchants. (1924)
7. ↑ Bianca Patricia Pick: Green, Joseph. University of Oldenburg.
8. ↑ Robert Zimmermann: Kant and Spiritism ; Vienna 1879
9. ↑ Stephen Larsen: The Fundamentalist Mind: How Polarized Thinking Imperils Us All. Quest Books, 2014, ISBN 0-8356-3101-X , p. 220