{"id":948,"date":"2019-11-28T04:30:17","date_gmt":"2019-11-28T04:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/?p=948"},"modified":"2022-09-06T22:04:28","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T02:04:28","slug":"kantian-hustle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/2019\/11\/28\/kantian-hustle\/","title":{"rendered":"Kantian hustle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Reading <a href=\"https:\/\/www.the-orb.org\/post\/from-lindrum-s-to-princeton-and-surfaces-to-the-hereafter-a-written-interview-with-mark-johnston\">an interview with Mark Johnston<\/a>, I learned a fact that I can&#8217;t believe I didn&#8217;t know before: As a student, Immanuel Kant made money as a pool shark. Johnston gives this extended quote from one of Kant&#8217;s university friends:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Kant\u2019s only recreation was playing billiards&#8230; [He] had nearly perfected [his] game, and rarely returned home without some winnings. As a consequence, persons refused to play with [him], and [he] abandoned this source of income, and chose instead L\u2019Hombre, which he played well.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One question was whether this could possibly be true. A little poking around the internet finds lots of other scholars quoting the same passage, along with enough scholarly apparatus to make it sound authoritative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Another question was about L&#8217;Hombre. Turns out it&#8217;s a card game. Not just any card game, either, but the first trick-taking game to introduce bidding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Independently of philosophy, I have an interest in card games. So I was surprised that I hadn&#8217;t already known about this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The rules for L&#8217;Hombre are a mad jumble.<span id='easy-footnote-1-948' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/2019\/11\/28\/kantian-hustle\/#easy-footnote-bottom-1-948' title=' &lt;a href=&quot;https:\/\/www.pagat.com\/lhombre\/lhombre.html&quot;&gt;Complete rules for L&amp;#8217;Hombre&lt;\/a&gt;  are available from the card games omnibus site Pagat, although the game Kant played would have been different at least in the details. It&amp;#8217;s a  folk game and so admits of tremendous regional and temporal variation.'><sup>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> The Ace of Spades is always the highest trump, and the Ace of Clubs is always the <em>third-highest<\/em> trump. The second-highest trump is either the rank 7 or the rank 2 card of the trump suit, depending on whether the trump suit is red or black.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Try to synthesize that manifold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reading an interview with Mark Johnston, I learned a fact that I can&#8217;t believe I didn&#8217;t know before: As a student, Immanuel Kant made money as a pool shark. Johnston gives this extended quote from one of Kant&#8217;s university friends: Kant\u2019s only recreation was playing billiards&#8230; [He] had nearly perfected [his] game, and rarely returned &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/2019\/11\/28\/kantian-hustle\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Kantian hustle&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[33,9],"tags":[56,53],"class_list":["post-948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-link-dump","category-philosophy","tag-games","tag-history"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7PjAo-fi","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=948"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1620,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948\/revisions\/1620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}