A Palingenesis and Its Consequences 179sify it as consistently one or the other."^136 The same point must be made
a fortiori about Kant's contemporaries.
Kant, from the very beginning of his philosophical training, knew of the
limits of Wolffian philosophizing, and he never accepted it without reser¬
vation. Most importantly, however, it would have contradicted not only
the spirit of the age, but also the way Kant understood himself. Diderot
had praised the "eclectics" in the Encyclopedic as independent thinkers who
were subject to no master, who critically investigated all doctrines, and who
accepted only those things that are witnessed by their own "experience"
and their "raison." Most significant German thinkers of Kant's generation
wanted to be "eclectics" in this sense. They aimed to be "Selbstdenker," in¬
dependent thinkers in the service of science and humanity, not members of
some sect. Though most of them were educated in a more or less Wolffian
spirit, they were by no means orthodox Wolffians. Kant was no exception
in this regard. He, like many of his contemporaries, dared to think for him¬
self. Therefore, discussions of the early Kant's "empiricism" versus his
"rationalism" need to be taken cum grano salts.
This is only part of the problem, however. The very conception of
Kant's "precritical development" poses another, perhaps even more fun¬
damental, problem. In order to be able to give a coherent account of any
kind of development, we must have at least some idea about the end prod¬
uct of that process. We must be able to specify what counts as develop¬
ment "toward" that goal, and what is an "aberration." Only if we know what
it is that counts as the goal or final achievement can we trace the stages of
such a process. However, there is no such final goal toward which the early
Kant developed. His critical philosophy represents — as he himself tells
us - the beginning of something new. It was the result of a sudden, deci¬
sive, and radical change in his philosophical outlook, not the fruit of a long,
focused search.^137 Therefore, it is misleading to speak of the "develop¬
ment" of the early Kant in any but a very rough or approximate sense. To¬
ward the end of the so-called precritical period, namely on May 7, 1768,
Kant confessed to Herder that he was "not attached to anything," and he
went on to say:
with a deep indifference towards my own opinions as well as those of others I often
subvert the entire structure and consider it from several points of view in order to hit
finally perhaps on the position from which I can hope to draw the system truthfully.
Kant was deeply skeptical not only about the philosophical theories ad¬
vanced by others, but also about his own attempts, admitting himself that