Kant’s categorical imperative

Kant’s categorical imperative enters the Old School not as an explored philosophical argument but as the director’s recurring emblem of authority. Under Director Wulicke, the school’s language of duty and service gives a severe institutional force to a principle that is repeatedly invoked in official speeches, while the contrast with the school’s former warmth leaves its moral meaning unsettled.

Invocation at the Old School

Director Wulicke, formerly a professor at a Prussian secondary school, succeeded the jovial head who had guided the institution when Hanno Buddenbrook’s father and uncle were students. The former director died early in 1871; with Wulicke’s appointment, a new spirit entered the school. In his official speeches he unfurled what the narration calls the ominous banner of the categorical imperative of the philosopher Kant. The phrase functions as a public declaration of the values Wulicke intends to govern the institution, rather than as a philosophical discussion of Kant’s ethics.

Duty, Authority, and Career

Under the new regime, authority, duty, power, service, and career rose to the highest standing. The Old School became a state within the state, shaped by a Prussian ideal of rigorous service. Teachers and students alike came to think of themselves as civil servants, attentive to advancement and to how those in power regarded them. The imperative’s institutional force is therefore bound to a larger system: a moral vocabulary of duty accompanies habits of obedience and career-conscious self-presentation.

Modernization and the Lost Ideal

Soon after Wulicke’s arrival, the old institution was renovated and modernized according to current hygienic and aesthetic standards, and the work was completed successfully. Yet material improvement did not settle whether the school had become better. The narration leaves open whether it had been more sympathetic and generous in the past, when its rooms held less modern comfort but more kindness, sentiment, serenity, benevolence, and good cheer. Against that remembered atmosphere, the director’s invocation of the imperative carries an ominous edge: ethical language is associated with a system whose efficiency and authority may have displaced humane feeling.

Significance

The contrast does not reduce Kant’s philosophy itself to Wulicke’s conduct; the evidence shows how the director deploys its name within official speech, not what Kant’s doctrine means in full. In the school’s transformation, however, the phrase becomes inseparable from the values Wulicke elevates and the institution’s culture of service and advancement. Its narrative significance lies in that tension between a universal-sounding moral principle and its use as a banner for hierarchical discipline, set against the remembered generosity of the older school.