i6o Kant: A Biographybookstore, which had the atmosphere of a coffeehouse. Kanter not only
sold books, which could be inspected by the professors, but also published
the Konigsbergische Gelehrten und Politischen Zeitungen, which the profes¬
sors and even the students — at least on certain days — could read without
payment. The intellectuals of Königsberg made this bookstore into a cen¬
tral cultural institution and meeting place. Visitors often made it their first
stop. Beginning in the summer of 1768, the bookstore was adorned with the
portraits of some of the most important cultural representatives of Königs¬
berg and the rest of Prussia, including Mendelssohn, Hippel, Scheffner,
Lindner, and of course Kant, who had published some of his works with
Kanter.^61 Kant also benefited in other ways from living in Kanter's house.
He could, for instance, borrow all the books he wanted and take them up to
his apartment. Furthermore, at times he saw a manuscript even before it
was printed, and he was kept up-to-date on the literary and social gossip,
whether he wished to be or not.
The position of professor of poetry was given on October 24 to Lindner,
one of Kant's closest friends from his student years. Indeed, it appears that
Kant himself used his influence in Königsberg to obtain this position for
Lindner.^62 Lindner's return to Königsberg was significant for Kant. After
the loss of Funk, Lindner could have become the most important of his
academic friends. Funk had not been a faithful husband — like Kant, he was
interested at least as much in gallantry as in scholarship. Lindner was less
interested in matters of gallantry and more in literature. Though one might
suppose that his interests were more compatible with the new character
Kant began forming at the time, there is no evidence that the two continued
their friendship. One of the reasons for this might have been Lindner's the¬
ological views. He later became court preacher in Königsberg and Hamann's
confessor.^63 By all accounts, he was closer to Hamann than to Kant.
Kant continued to teach a heavy load. He tried to teach students how
to philosophize, but he did not see himself as teaching his students the
truth in a systematic fashion. In his "Announcement" of his lectures for
the winter semester of 1765—66 he argued that a skeptical method is best in
philosophy.^64 He told his prospective students that he was not going to teach
philosophy ("which is impossible"), but rather how to philosophize:
The true method of instruction in philosophy is zetetic, as it was called by some of the
ancients (derived from zeteiri) It is searching, and it can become dogmatic, that is, de¬
cided through a more developed reason only in some parts^65
Using the old Pyrrhonic characterization of the Skeptics as inquirers who
"persist in their investigations," he also explicitly pointed out in his lee-