As for the neighbours-setting-their-watches one, this is the kind of fact that makes you wonder how you ever believed it. This is some ‘The-Great-Wall-of-China-can-be-seen-from-space’-level shit (Honestly, how?). First off, there are at least three different versions of Kant’s daily routine kicking around the internet: the directly-post-lunch walk, the 3:30pm walk and the 5pm walk. Secondly, what possible reason could Kant have for leaving atthe same time everyday? Remember that the neighbours are supposedly waiting by the window with their watches so it really does have to be exactlythe same time. Is he supposed to have waited behind the door counting the seconds when he was ready early?

Even supposing Kant really did leave the house at exactly the same time everyday, who are these neighbours? Why are they both (a) so keen to know the exact time and (b) owners of such terrible watches? Who was the first to notice that Kant left the house at the same time every day? And how did they notice if they owned such an unreliable watch? How does Kant leave at the same time every day if all his neighbours’ watches are so faulty? How has this man come to own the only reliable timepiece in all of Königsberg?

Here Kant is calling on us not to use our fellow human beings merely as tools to get what we want, as means to our ends . This doesn’t imply we can never use other people as means (We all use other people as means all the time. For instance, we use the bus driver as a means to get to our destination). It only implies that we have to respect their own ends while doing so (For instance, by paying the bus driver a fair price for their labour). We all have to respect each other as rational creatures with our own hopes and desires. This means not lying to others, not stealing from others and not parking each other outside the club like a Mercedes-Benz when you’re trying to get off with Kanye West.

“...if you have by a lie prevented someone just now bent on murder from committing the deed, then you are legally accountable for all the consequences that might arise from it. But if you have kept strictly to the truth, then public justice can hold nothing against you, whatever the unforeseen consequences might be. It is still possible that, after you have honestly answered “yes” to the murderer’s question as to whether his enemy is at home, the latter has nevertheless gone out unnoticed, so that he would not meet the murderer and the deed would not be done; but if you had lied and said that he is not at home, and he has actually gone out (though you are not aware of it), so that the murderer encounters him while going away and perpetrates his deed on him, then you can by right be prosecuted as the author of his death. For if you had told the truth to the best of your knowledge, then neighbours might have come and apprehended the murderer while he was searching the house for his enemy and the deed would have been prevented. Thus one who tells a lie , however well disposed he may be, must be responsible for its consequences even before a civil court and must pay the penalty for them, however unforeseen they may have been; for truthfulness is a duty that must be regarded as the basis of all duties to be grounded on contract, the laws of which is made uncertain and useless if even the least exception to it is admitted. To be truthful (honest) in all declarations is therefore a sacred command of reason prescribing unconditionally, one not to be restricted by any conveniences.”