The Frankfurt Airport School

I was drying my hands in a restroom at Central Europe’s largest airport when I caught a fragment of an announcement: “Passengers… Kierkegaard and Kant, please contact the information desk.” They must be on a flight to Copenhagen, I thought. Can’t Kant be a Danish name?

Then the announcer repeated the summons: “Passengers Spinoza, Descartes, Kierkegaard and Kant, please contact the information desk.” He spoke English but pronounced the names as written, in a sort of German way: Des-car-tes, Keer-keh-guard. Was it a joke or some security awareness test? And could it be one guy, not four – an S.D.K. Kant? An offspring of philosophically-minded parents perhaps, or a thinker who refashioned his name in an image of the four greats?

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