Abstract
This is a brief discussion of Kant’s life, including his early education, the cultural background of Pietism and rationalism, his university studies, his work as a professor, the plans for and responses to the three Critiques, and his attitude toward religion.
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Notes
- 1.
I have drawn primarily from the following early sources: Johann Christoph Mortzfeld, Fragmente aus Kants Leben: Ein biographischer Versuch (Königsberg: Hering und Haberland, 1802); Ludwig Ernst Borowski, Darstellung des Lebens und Charakters Immanuel Kants, Von Kant selbst genau revidirt und berichtigt (Königsberg: Nicolovius, 1804); Reinhold Bernard Jachmann, Immanuel Kant geschildert in Briefen an einen Freund (Königsberg: Nicolovius, 1804); Ehregott Andreas Christoph Wasianski, Immanuel Kant in seinen letzten Lebensjahren: Ein Beitrag zur Kenntnis seines Charakters und häuslichen Lebens aus dem täglichen Umgange mit ihm (Königsberg: Nicolovius, 1804); Johann Gottfried Hasse, Letzte Äusserungen Kants von einem seiner Tischgenossen (Königsberg: Nicolovius, 1804); Friedrich Theodor Rink, Ansichten aus Immanuel Kants Leben (Königsberg: Goebbels und Unzer, 1805); and material gathered in 1804 for Samuel Gottlieb Wald’s memorial address for Kant, but first published in Rudolf Reicke, Kantiana: Beiträge zu Immanuel Kants Leben und Schriften (Königsberg: Theile, 1860). Emil Arnoldt assessed the above and other material in his “Kants Jugend und die fünf ersten Jahre seiner Privatdocentur,” Altpreussische Monatsschrift 18 (1881): 606–86. Still definitive is Karl Vorländer, Immanuel Kant, der Mann und das Werk, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Meiner, 1924); and the more recent (and in English) Manfred Kuehn, Kant: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), both of which I have made constant use. Finally, an excellent brief developmental summary of Kant’s writings can be found in Paul Guyer, Kant (London: Routledge, 2006), ch. 1. An earlier version of the present essay appeared as “Kant’s Career in German Idealism,” in The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism, ed. Matthew C. Altman (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 15–33.
- 2.
Vorländer, Immanuel Kant, 2:385. The Kant family papers are printed in Arnoldt, “Kants Jugend,” 608.
- 3.
Johann Friedrich Goldbeck, Nachrichten von der Königlichen Universität zu Königsberg in Preußen, und den daselbst befindlichen Lehr-, Schul- und Erzeihungsanstalten (Leipzig: Buchhandlung der Gelehrten, 1782), 254–55; and Fritz Gause, Die Geschichte der Stadt Königsberg in Preussen, 3 vols., 2nd ed. (Köln: Böhlau, 1996), 2:126.
- 4.
Vorländer, Immanuel Kant, 1:20–21.
- 5.
Borowski claims that Kant hoped to erect a monument in Schultz’s honor; see his biography (Darstellung, 152) and his notes for Wald (quoted in Reicke, Kantiana, 31). In the latter he refers to Schultz as one of Kant’s valued teachers at the Collegium Fridericianum, alongside Kant’s Latin teacher, Johann Friedrich Heydenreich.
- 6.
Reported by Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel in his autobiography and reprinted in Friedrich Schlichtegroll, Biographie des Königl. Preuß. Geheimenkriegsraths zu Königsberg, Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel, zum Theil von ihm selbst verfaßt (Gotha: Perthes, 1801), 78–79.
- 7.
On Kant’s experiences here, see Heiner F. Klemme, Die Schule Immanuel Kants: Mit dem Text von Friedrich Schiffert über das Königsberger Collegium Fridericianum, 1741 (Hamburg: Meiner, 1994), esp. 32–60.
- 8.
Wald, quoted in Reicke, Kantiana, 6.
- 9.
Borowski, Darstellung, 161–62.
- 10.
Isaiah Berlin, Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder, ed. Henry Hardy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 258.
- 11.
Lewis White Beck, Early German Philosophy: Kant and His Predecessors (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), 258–59.
- 12.
Wald, quoted in Reicke, Kantiana, 6; a nearly verbatim quote is given by Hippel in Schlichtegroll, Hippel, 160.
- 13.
Hippel, quoted in Schlichtegroll, Hippel, 162.
- 14.
Benno Erdmann, Martin Knutzen und seine Zeit: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Wolfischen Schule und insbesondere zur Entwicklungsgeschichte Kants (Leipzig: Voss, 1876), 116.
- 15.
Arthur Warda, “Ergänzungen zu E. Fromms zweitem und drittem Beitrage zur Lebensgeschichte Kants,” Altpreussische Monatsschrift 38 (1901): 402.
- 16.
Heilsberg, quoted in Reicke, Kantiana, 48.
- 17.
Ibid., 49.
- 18.
Ibid., 48; and Borowski, Darstellung, 28. See also Manfred Kuehn, “Kant’s Teachers in the Exact Sciences,” in Kant and the Sciences, ed. Eric Watkins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 11–30.
- 19.
Rink, Ansichten, 27.
- 20.
Borowski, Darstellung, 28, 29, 163–64. See also Jachmann, Immanuel Kant, 10; and C. J. Kraus, quoted in Reicke, Kantiana, 7.
- 21.
See Hans-Joachim Waschkies, Physik und Physikotheologie des jungen Kant: Die Vorgeschichte seiner Allgemeinen Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels (Amsterdam: Grüner, 1987), 20n4.
- 22.
Both Erdmann (Martin Knutzen) and Waschkies (Physik und Physikotheologie) promote the view of a close relationship between Knutzen and Kant. A more skeptical position is found in Kuehn, Kant, 78–84; and Kuehn, “Kant’s Teachers,” 22–23.
- 23.
From a recently discovered reflection of Kant’s, reproduced in Steve Naragon and Werner Stark, “Ein Geschenk für Rose Burger. Notizen und Hinweise zu einem neu aufgefundenen Kant-Blatt,” Kant-Studien 104, no. 1 (March 2013): 5. In the context of discussing Kant’s logic lectures, Jachmann wrote that “it was never his intention merely to recite a logic to his listeners, but rather to teach them to think” (Immanuel Kant, 28–29). See also the Dohna logic lectures of 1792: “Not to learn philosophy – but rather to learn to philosophize, otherwise it remains only imitation” (DWL 24:698). See also Kant’s discussion of the “zetetic method” of the Announcement (1765; APL 2:307).
- 24.
Borowski, Darstellung, 84, 188. The same sentiment is found in Kant’s essay “An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?” (1784; WE 8:35), and at the end of “What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking?” (1786): “Thinking for oneself means seeking the supreme touchstone of truth in oneself (i.e. in one’s own reason); and the maxim of always thinking for oneself is enlightenment” (OT 8:146n).
- 25.
Most universities were arranged with four faculties: philosophy, plus the three higher faculties of theology, law, and medicine. Graduation was possible from any of them. A graduate of the philosophy faculty became a Doctoris Philosophiae seu Magistri – a “doctor of philosophy or magister,” although he was commonly called a “Magister” (designated by an “M.” printed before one’s name) and a graduate from any of the higher faculties was called a “Doctor” (designated by a “D.” printed before one’s name). The words themselves are nearly synonymous: a magister is one who teaches, and a doctor is one who has been taught.
- 26.
Waschkies, Physik und Physikotheologie, 25–27, offers the best evidence for this disputed date of Kant’s departure. This early chronology is contested. For an account, see “The Hofmeister” at www.manchester.edu/kant/Students/studentHofmeister.htm.
- 27.
Bernard Haagen, “Auf den Spuren Kants in Judtschen. Ein Beitrag zur Lebensgeschichte des Philosophen,” Altpreußische Monatsschrift 48 (1911): 382–411, 528–56; at 390.
- 28.
This matter had already been resolved by Jean le Rond d’Alembert in 1743, although Kant had not heard the news, which presumably had not yet reached Königsberg.
- 29.
Kant was also studying the work of academics such as Wolff, who taught at Halle and Marburg, and Crusius, who taught at Leipzig. But Lambert and Maupertuis were outside the university, as was Euler (other than for a brief stint at St. Petersburg). Hume and Rousseau were non-academics, but Kant did not read them until later.
- 30.
Goldbeck, Nachrichten, 102, estimates student living expenses (room, board, and firewood) at sixty thaler per year, so these tuition fees for private lectures were not trivial. For comparison, Kant’s starting annual professor’s salary in 1770 was 166 2/3 thaler; see the Cabinet order from King Friedrich II of March 31, 1770 (reprinted at Ak 10:94).
- 31.
F. J. Buck held the logic/metaphysics position – he had been preferred over Kant in 1759 when J. D. Kypke’s death made available the position – and Kant petitioned the government to give the vacant mathematics chair to either K. A. Christiani (1707–1780), the current professor of moral philosophy, or to Buck, with the resulting vacancy to go to Kant. The king chose the latter course, but it appears from his letter that Kant would have been equally comfortable assuming either chair (moral philosophy or logic/metaphysics).
- 32.
Most of the data regarding Kant’s teaching comes from Emil Arnoldt, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Otto Schöndörffer, 10 vols. (Berlin: Cassirer, 1906–1911), vols. 4–5.
- 33.
This was an introductory course that surveyed the philosophical disciplines (logic, metaphysics, practical philosophy) and their history.
- 34.
Franz Eulenburg, Die Frequenz der deutschen Universitäten von ihrer Gründung bis zur Gegenwart (Leipzig: Teubner, 1904), 296.
- 35.
Jensch, quoted in Johann Friedrich Abegg, Reisetagebuch von 1798 (Frankfurt: Insel, 1976), 251.
- 36.
By government decree, professors had to use an approved textbook in each of their courses. Purgstall describes the tattered condition of Kant’s copy of Meier’s logic text (this was near the very end of Kant’s teaching career): “He always brings the book along. It looks so old and soiled, I believe that he has brought it daily to class with him for forty years. All the blank leaves are covered with writing in a small hand, and besides, many of the printed pages have leaves pasted on them, and lines are frequently crossed out, so that, as you might imagine, scarcely anything of Meyer’s Logic is left.” Even by the early 1760s, Jensch reported that Kant’s copy of Baumgarten’s Metaphysica was “covered with notes all over” (Karl Hugelmann, “Ein Brief über Kant,” Altpreussische Monatsschrift 16 [1879]: 608–9).
- 37.
Christian Friedrich Reusch, Kant und seine Tischgenossen: Aus dem Nachlaß des jüngsten derselben, des Geh. Ob.-Reg.-Rats Dr. Chr. F. Reusch (Königsberg: Tag & Koch, 1848), 291–92.
- 38.
From a letter written by Purgstall and quoted in Hugelmann, “Ein Brief über Kant,” 608–9.
- 39.
Borowski, Darstellung, 85, 185–86.
- 40.
Wald, quoted in Reicke, Kantiana, 18. Hippel, who matriculated at the university in 1756, wrote that he took the less challenging courses from Buck before attending Kant’s lectures (Hippels sämmtliche Werke, vol. 12: Hippels Leben, ed. Gottlieb Hippel [Berlin: Reimer, 1835], 91). Kant was aware of these difficulties and encouraged students to attend K. L. Pörschke’s lectures first in preparation (Jachmann, Immanuel Kant, 30).
- 41.
Ten years earlier, Kant considered a similar challenge – this time from the side of Wolffian rationalism. In A New Elucidation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Cognition (1755; NE 1:387–416), Kant addressed this conflict between rationalism and human freedom, but at the time sided with Wolff over Crusius’s “liberty of indifference” (NE 1:398–405). Kant eventually abandoned the rationalist account of freedom – calling it “the freedom of a turnspit” in his Critique of Practical Reason (CPrR 5:97).
- 42.
David Hume, Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding [later editions: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding] (London: Millar, 1748), §7 (“Of the Idea of Power or Necessary Connexion”), pt. 2 (pp. 119–27). Kant first raised this worry about causal connection in his essay Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy (1763; ANM 2:167–204): “I fully understand how a consequence is posited by a ground in accordance with the rule of identity: analysis of the concepts shows that the consequence is contained in the ground.…But what I should dearly like to have distinctly explained to me, however, is how one thing issues from another thing, though not by means of the law of identity” (ANM 2:202).
- 43.
An early version of this plan can be found in Kant’s letter to J. H. Lambert (December 31, 1765) (C 10:56).
- 44.
Apart from Kuehn’s biography (Kant), see also Manfred Kuehn, “Kant’s Critical Philosophy and Its Reception – the First Five Years (1781–1786),” in The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy, ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 630–63; Karl Ameriks, Kant and the Fate of Autonomy: Problems in the Appropriation of the Critical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Brigitte Sassen, Kant’s Early Critics: The Empiricist Critique of the Theoretical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); and Frederick C. Beiser, The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987).
- 45.
Published in the January 19, 1782 issue of the Göttingen Gelehrten Anzeigen.
- 46.
Reinhold published his letters in installments in C. M. Wieland’s Teutsche Merkur (August 1786 to October 1787), and Kant publicly thanked Reinhold in “On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy” (1788; TelP 8:160, 184).
- 47.
Kant replied to Eberhard with On a Discovery whereby Any New Critique of Pure Reason Is to Be Made Superfluous by an Older One (1790; NCR 8:187–251), and also enlisted his colleague Johann Schultz to critically review Eberhard’s magazine.
- 48.
Kant, “Against Schlettwein” (1797; Ak 12:367–68). See Johann Schultz, Erläuterungen über des Herrn Professor Kant Critik der reinen Vernunft (Königsberg: Dengel, 1784); and Johann Schultz, Prüfung der Kantischen Critik der reinen Vernunft, 2 vols. (Königsberg: Hartung, 1789).
- 49.
Schultz’s criticisms are found in his anonymous review of J. A. H. Ulrich, Institutiones logicae et metaphysicae scholae suae scripsit (Jena: Cröker, 1785), in Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung (December 13, 1785), 247–49, translated into English in Sassen, Kant’s Early Critics, 210–14. See also Kant’s Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786; MFS 4:467–565), where he publicly answers Schultz, in part by demoting the Transcendental Deduction’s role (MFS 4:474–76).
- 50.
Heinrich Heine, On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany and Other Writings, trans. Howard Pollack-Milgate, ed. Terry Pinkard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 79. The claim that housewives set their clocks to Kant’s passing was likely inspired by Jachmann’s account of the evenings Kant would spend at Green’s house, which always ended at the same time: “The group always disbanded so punctually at 7 o’clock that I often heard the neighbors on the street say: It can’t yet be seven, since Professor Kant has yet to pass by” (Immanuel Kant, 81–82). Heine’s claim regarding the name of the walk sounds likely, but is false, as it bore that name long before Kant ever walked there; see Christopher Hartknoch, Alt- und Neues Preussen, oder Preüssischer Historien (Frankfurt & Leipzig: Hallervorden, 1684), 395.
- 51.
Karl Gottfried Hagen, “Bemerkungen, die Entstehung des Bernsteins betreffend,” in Beiträge zur Kunde Preußens, 8 vols. (Königsberg, 1821), 4:207–27; the Kant anecdote is in a note on p. 209. Jachmann (Immanuel Kant, 147) mentions Hagen as one of Kant’s regular dinner guests. A photograph of presumably the same watch was published in a German newspaper sometime after 1933, although the amber pendant appears to have gone missing. The source of the clipping is unknown, but it was reproduced in Lorenz Grimoni and Martina Will, eds., Immanuel Kant: Erkenntnis – Freiheit – Frieden (Husum: Husum, 2004), 183.
- 52.
August Hagen, “Kantiana,” Neue Preußische Provinzial-Blätter 6 (1848): 8; and Jachmann, Immanuel Kant, 77–79. The proposed dating of the event is argued for in Kuehn, Kant, 154–55.
- 53.
Der Mann nach der Uhr, oder der ordentliche Mann, published in 1765, first performed in Hamburg the following year (Hagen, “Kantiana,” 9–10). Jachmann, as well as Hagen, draws this connection to Green (Immanuel Kant, 80).
- 54.
As suggested by Hamann’s correspondence (quoted in Vorländer, Immanuel Kant, 2:28). C. J. Kraus also notes that the daily gatherings occurred in later years, when Green’s gout prevented him from leaving his house easily (Reicke, Kantiana, 60).
- 55.
Jachmann, Immanuel Kant, 81.
- 56.
Borowski, Darstellung, 102; and Jachmann, Immanuel Kant, 51–52, 145, 148. The Motherbys had eleven children in all. Jachmann later served as a tutor to one of the sons, William Motherby, who attended Kant’s lectures in the early 1790s and later distinguished himself as a physician.
- 57.
Jachmann, Immanuel Kant, 80.
- 58.
Earlier, in the 1760s, Kant seems to have spent many of his Sundays just north of the city in Moditten with the head forester Michael Wobser. This is where Kant stayed for a few weeks in 1763 while composing Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime; see Dr. Michelis, “Kant – Hauslehrer in Judtschen?” Kant-Studien 38, nos. 1–2 (Jan. 1933): 492–93.
- 59.
This arrangement came to an end around 1789 after a falling out between the two men, on which see Kuehn, Kant, 331–34. Kant continued with his dinners, of course, only without Kraus, and when they were both invited to someone else’s home, “they never sat right next to each other, but also not very far from each other” (Abegg, Reisetagebuch, 255–56).
- 60.
Jachmann, Immanuel Kant, 146–47.
- 61.
The title of Hasse, Letze Äusserungen, could be translated as “Kant’s last remarks, by one of his dinner companions,” and Reusch, Kant und seine Tischgenossen, as “Kant and his dinner companions.”
- 62.
Abegg, Reisetagebuch, 255. This topic might strike some as too trivial to discuss, but these dinners were a central part of Kant’s life. Kuehn draws a plausible connection between this conversational form of life and Kant’s critical philosophy (Kant, 273–74).
- 63.
Quoted in Hugelmann, “Ein Brief,” 610. See also Hasse, Letze Äusserungen, 6–7. Nor did Jachmann ever hear Kant mention any of his writings during these dinnertime conversations (Immanuel Kant, 137). Vorländer offers a close description of the rituals surrounding Kant’s dinner parties in his home (Immanuel Kant, 2:297–300).
- 64.
This idea is usefully explored in Alix A. Cohen, “The Ultimate Kantian Experience: Kant on Dinner Parties,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 25, no. 4 (Oct. 2008): 315–36.
- 65.
C. J. Kraus, quoted in Reicke, Kantiana, 60. Johann Ludwig Schwarz was staying with the Keyserlings in February or March of 1787 and mentions dining with Kant four of the five days he was there, so clearly Kant was often more than just a Tuesday guest. See Schwarz, Denkwürdigkeiten aus dem Leben eines Geschäftsmannes, Dichters und Humoristen (Leipzig: Kollmann, 1828), 180.
- 66.
This was a peacefully conducted arrangement that occurred during the Seven Years War.
- 67.
A note in the November 21, 1786, issue of the Allgemeinen Literaturzeitung claims that the new edition of the Critique of Pure Reason would also include a “Critique of Pure Practical Reason” (Ak 3:556).
- 68.
And yet we know from the Vigilantius metaphysics notes from that very semester that Kant did indeed lecture on natural theology, some 36 pages’ worth, although unfortunately nearly all of this section of the notes has gone missing, leaving us with only the very end of the discussion (LM 29:1040).
- 69.
“On the Causes of Earthquakes on the Occasion of the Calamity that Befell the Western Countries of Europe towards the End of Last Year” (NS 1:419–27), “History and Natural Description of the Most Noteworthy Occurrences of the Earthquake that Struck a Large Part of the Earth at the End of the Year 1755” (NS 1:431–61), and “Continued Observations on the Earthquakes That Have Been Experienced for Some Time” (NS 1:465–72).
- 70.
Reusch, Kant und seine Tischgenossen, 5.
- 71.
Hasse, Letzte Äusserungen, 28–29.
- 72.
Abegg, Reisetagebuch, 147. Professor Pörschke, a former student and then colleague of Kant’s, told Abegg that Kant had assured him that “he had been teaching for a long time without ever doubting any of the Christian dogma, [but] gradually one piece after another fell away” (Abegg, Reisetagebuch, 184).
- 73.
Hagen, “Kantiana,” 16.
- 74.
Wasianski, Immanuel Kant, 217.
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Naragon, S. (2017). Kant’s Life. In: Altman, M. (eds) The Palgrave Kant Handbook. Palgrave Handbooks in German Idealism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54656-2_2
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