Student and Private Teacher 81revelation at all, or the Christian revelation is the only one. Since the first
disjunct is false, the second one must be true. In similar fashion he proves
the doctrine of the trinity and other dogmas, proving in the end not just
the truth of Christianity, but the Lutheran version of it as the only true
one. The methodology of the book is Wolffian, but its spirit could hardly
be further removed from Wolffian philosophy.^92
Yet being popular and engaging, Knutzen became almost immediately
one of Kant's favorite teachers, the one who had the most important early
influence upon the young student. Borowski claimed that Kant "attended
his classes in philosophy and mathematics without a break."^93 If this is
true, then his weekly schedule during the first semester would have in¬
cluded the following courses from Knutzen: four hours of mathematics,
four hours of philosophy, one hour of logic "in outline," as well as exercises
in disputation. In the second semester he would have taken a more ad¬
vanced course in logic, another course in mathematics, in which Knutzen
introduced "select minds" to higher mathematics, and again exercises in
disputation; and in the fourth semester he would have taken practical phi¬
losophy. Later, he probably attended lectures in rational psychology, nat¬
ural philosophy, natural law, rhetoric, mnemonics, algebra, and the analysis
of the infinite.^94 During his first few semesters he must also have attended
Teske's classes in physics and Ammon's classes in mathematics.^95 In his
third year he went to Schulz's lectures in systematic theology. The lectures
he and Wlömer appear to have attended covered theology insofar as it is
based on revelation, but there may have been others.^96 Some of Borowski's
remarks suggest that he also attended Schulz's other lectures.^97 They
would have included a course on "theology: thetic-antithetic," in which
he taught Christian dogmatic in a dialectical arrangement that reminds
one very much of Kant's own later dialectic. To these classes, we may safely
add a number taught by such people as Rappolt, Marquardt, and Gre-
gorovius. Even if Knutzen was Kant's favorite teacher, he was not his only
one. He sought, after all, the most well-rounded education that might be
obtained in a place like Königsberg.
In 1743 appeared a book by an anonymous author with the title Rea¬
sonable Thoughts on Nature by a Christian Friend of God. Who [sic] is Nature?
That It Is Powerless without His Omniscient Limitation. And How through
the One, Divisible Power Everything in This World Is Possible Only in and
through the Mediate Causes in Accordance with the Efficacy or Action, which
Has Been Given to It. The author was the notorious Christian Gabriel Fis¬
cher, who had returned in 1737 to Königsberg after having promised to