Student and Private Teacher 87he honors and respects "the great masters of our knowledge" whom he is
going to attack in this work.^119 In an uncharacteristically immodest way, he
proclaims: "I have already prescribed the route I want to take. I will begin
my course and nothing shall prevent me from continuing it."^120
These passages show that Kant has become an independent thinker, and
also that he is confident he can make an original contribution to natural
philosophy. They do not tell us what led to this — at least not directly. Yet
perhaps they do so indirectly. In this work Kant is addressing not just his
colleagues in Königsberg, not just the members of the academy, but the
German public as a whole. Still a student, he dares to become a partici¬
pant in what he takes to be a central dispute between some of the most
famous thinkers of his age. In a sense, he is going over the heads of his pro¬
fessors, bypassing the discussion within the university, as it were, and as¬
serting his right to be an equal participant in the philosophical discussion
of the period.
It is just as interesting to note again what Kant does not do. If he had
followed the common career of a talented philosophy student at the Uni¬
versity of Königsberg, he would have written a dissertation in Latin, sub¬
mitted it, become a Magister of philosophy, and then begun teaching at the
university or at one of the high schools in Königsberg.^121 One of the
questions that must therefore be asked — but to my knowledge never has
been — is: "Why did Kant not present this early work as a dissertation to the
university?"^122 Instead of expending his energy on fulfilling an academic
requirement that would have allowed him to pursue his interests by teach¬
ing the very things he was interested in, why did he choose to write this
work in German? He could have written it in Latin, and he must have been
sufficiently confident of its merit. Instead, he wrote a work that could not
possibly have advanced him institutionally. At the very least, this act could
make him seem presumptuous and make enemies for him in Königsberg.
We do not know for certain why Kant chose this course of action, but
the tone of defiance that comes through in his introduction suggests that
it was connected to the situation that existed in the institution he attended.
In the dedication he talks of his "low" status or "Niedrigkeit," and in the
book itself he repeatedly speaks of himself as "common" or "schlecht." His
attack on "the great masters of knowledge" was not directed just at Leibniz
and Newton, and his insistence that nothing would hinder him in achiev¬
ing his goals suggests that he was talking not only to the German public
in general but also to the Königsberg academic community in particular.
He wanted to be noticed. He felt insufficiently appreciated by the members