154 Kant: A Biographylife? Some have argued that, but it seems to beg the question.^29 Perhaps it
is not altogether false to say that at forty there began a process in which
Kant's external life became more and more predictable, and that this ulti¬
mately led to a dramatic increase in his literary productivity. Yet to say that
this was "a peculiar process of mechanization in Kant's external life which
favored his inner life... [and that] the dying of the periphery led to the
intensification of activity at the center of the psyche" is both too fanciful
and too simple-minded.^30 To say that Kant's conception of character was
"the only possible solution" to his life's problem appears to be just as naive
as to claim that the "life at the limit {Grenze), as the philosopher must lead
it, is always a life in crisis ... a life whose 'possibility' cannot be described
and a life which does not conform to any plan."^3 ' Of course, we as human
beings - Kant included - can plan our lives. These plans do not always
turn out the way we want them to turn out, but that is a different story.
Kant's newfound appreciation of maxims not only was rooted in the
desire to escape the unpleasant experiences of death, hypochondria, and
despair, but also was connected to other developments in his daily life.
During the time around 1764-5, Kant made new friends. Most important
among these new friends was Joseph Green, an English merchant who had
come to Königsberg when he was very young. Green was a bachelor like
Kant, but he lived a different life from the one Kant had lived until then.
Rather than being driven by the whirlpool of events, Green lived by the
strictest rules or maxims. Indeed, he followed the clock and calendar pedan¬
tically. Hippel, who wrote a play called The Man of the Clock in 1765, is
thought to have modeled this man after Green.^32 "Green was distinguished
by his character as a rare man of strict righteousness and true nobility, but
he was full of the most peculiar characteristics - a true whimsical man
[English in the original], whose days followed an invariable and strange
(launenhaft) rule."^33 Green traded in grain and herrings and also in coal
and manufactured goods.^34 He was the "greatest and most highly esteemed
among the merchants in the English colony of Königsberg."^35 Yet he was
less interested in pursuing his business than in reading books "about new
inventions and travels of discovery," living "the life of a hermit."^36 Ac¬
cording to one observer, he was "more a scholar than a merchant," and his
education was much superior to that of the other merchants of his day.^37
It is perhaps not surprising that Kant found his friendship so valuable.
We cannot be entirely sure when Kant came to know Green, but it was
sometime before 1766, and perhaps as early as 1765. In 1766, when Green
was on business in England, Scheffner wrote to Herder: "The Magister