Kant: A Biography

200 Kant: A Biography

for the future. The wretched condition, weakness, and disorder of the faculties, I must

employ in my enquiries, encrease my apprehensions. And the impossibility of amend¬

ing or correcting these faculties, reduces me almost to despair, and makes me resolve

to perish on the barren rock, on which I am at present, rather than venture myself upon

that boundless ocean which runs out into immensity. This sudden view of my danger

strikes me with melancholy; and, as it is usual for that passion, above all others, to

indulge itself, I cannot forbear feeding my despair with all those desponding reflec¬

tions which the present subject furnishes me with in such abundance.

Here is the passage with which the first installment of the "Night Thoughts"

ends:

The intense view of these manifold contradictions and imperfections in human rea¬
son has so wrought upon me, and heated my brain, that I am ready to reject all belief
and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than
another. Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what
condition shall I return? Whose favour shall I court, and whose anger must I dread?
What beings surround me? and on whom have I any influence, or who have any influ¬
ence on me? I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in
the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness, and
utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty.

Verfremded in this way, the Humean text makes a powerful statement. It
emphasizes the uselessness and danger of a certain way of philosophizing,
and it expresses a despair that is claimed to be the inevitable result of re¬
lying too much on reason. Philosophical reason necessarily leads us astray.
It cannot solve our problems, be they philosophical or otherwise. Hume's
Conclusion might in this way serve as a warning against too much and too
serious philosophizing and abstract thinking.
I have little doubt that Hamann intended precisely this message to come
across, that he translated the piece as a warning to those who relied too much
on philosophical reasoning and on pure reason, urging them to come back
to the fold of ordinary life and to a faith that needs no other justification
than itself. This was one of Hamann's most important views. Philosophy
understood as a foundational and rational enterprise that could solve all
our problems, is itself a problem for him. Hamann had found Hume use¬
ful in precisely this context before. In 1759 he had used Hume's Treatise
in his Socratic Memorabilia to remind rationalist thinkers, and especially
Kant, that Hume's skepticism pointed beyond their very project. Arguing
against Plato's misinterpretation of Socrates and invoking Shaftesbury's
Platonism as a veil of "unbelief," Hamann had emphasized Socratic igno¬
rance, and he had suggested that Hume's philosophy demonstrated, per-