"It Was a Pretty High Title": Kantian Ethics in A Connecticut Yankee

Reviewing Mark Twain's 23 November 1869 lecture at Allyn Hall, the Hartford Courant reported that "[w]e did not go in expecting him to expound political economy or the philosophy of Kant, but to have an hour of healthy laughter."¹ This notion of Twain as unlettered funnyman is not unique to the Courant; Twain himself cultivated the appearance of ignorance throughout his life, and despite the increasing volume of biography and criticism that counters this notion with evidence of his broad and sometimes deep reading, the one-dimensional idea of Twain persists. Even those who suggest that Twain was a man of great knowledge seem loath to grant him too much; Louis J. Budd, for instance, who pioneered the study of Twain's political beliefs in Mark Twain: Social Philosopher (1962), admitted in a recent preface to a new edition of his book that the subtitle "overstates the sophistication of Twain's ideas."² This is the joke of the Courant: it would seem ludicrous to expect Twain to understand, let alone expound upon, the philosopher's philosopher Immanuel Kant. The field of Twain studies has not yet actively challenged the logic of that joke, even though a few critics have framed his work within philosophical contexts.³

Although Twain hardly exhibited the rigor of a philosopher, perhaps Budd's original subtitle may be closer to the mark than he suggests. In the case of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, for instance, one of Twain's most overtly political novels, Kant's political philosophy provides a useful lens through which to understand the implicit motivations of Hank Morgan. To be clear from the outset, this essay is not a source study. Other critics, most notably Howard Baetzhold and Joe B. Fulton, have diligently scoured Twain's marginalia in various books to determine the extent to which they served as sources for A Connecticut Yankee.⁴ Although it might be possible to trace the political thought of Kant through Twain's extensive readings of Carlyle or Emerson, this essay instead follows the logic of Forrest G. Robinson, who claims that much of Twain's work "demands close attention to unconscious motives"; Robinson recognizes that Twain captured the spirit of the age, though not always intentionally.⁵ In a critique of Robinson, Fulton suggests that if one accepts this premise—that Twain may have unconsciously drawn on his reading and experiences for his writing—then one must conclude that Twain was not a careful writer or that he did not consciously borrow from other texts.⁶ I would suggest, however, that Twain consciously borrowed and crafted his work while drawing upon his unconscious mind for inspiration. This is no Freudian assertion; it is more in the mode of acknowledging the Jamesian theory of stream of consciousness. I do not dispute that Twain consciously borrowed extensively while writing Yankee; I do, however, believe that this borrowing is not all that transpires in the novel.

The impact of Kant upon nineteenth-century Anglo-American intellectual life cannot be disputed; René Wellek calls Kant "one of the great forces which awakened English idealism to a new life"; certainly, it is difficult to imagine Coleridge, Carlyle, and Emerson without the legacy of Kant.⁷ Furthermore, Kant was a common topic of discussion in several journals Twain frequently read, such as Harper's, the Atlantic, and the North American Review.⁸ Perhaps most pertinent to Connecticut Yankee, an anonymous article, signed only "A Yankee Farmer," appeared in the North American Review in July 1881, in which the author, posing as a common-sensical Yankee Farmer, engages with several interlocutors who represent various positions of religious and ethical theory, including that of Kant.⁹ While Twain may consciously have had only a passing knowledge of Kant, the fact remains that Kant was ever-present in the intellectual current of the nineteenth century.

Within this current Hank Morgan, Twain's Yankee, was born. Critics have had some difficulty pinning down Morgan's character; to be sure, his is not the most consistent of portraits; he appears...