Georg Ludwig Collins

(1763 - 1814)

Merchant, Reformed pastor, and freemason, Georg Ludwig Collins was a student at the University of Königsberg in 1784, where he took copious notes on a series of lectures on moral philosophy given by Immanuel Kant during the winter semester of 1784 and 1785. Around the same time, Kant published Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, in which he formulated his categorical imperative, “Act according to the maxim that can make itself at the same time a universal law.”