Silent Years 205ter semester from 1772—73 on, were important. They were to become the
most accessible of all his lectures.^61 While students dreaded his lectures
on logic and metaphysics, they seem genuinely to have enjoyed his lec¬
tures on anthropology.
Toward the end of 1773, Kant had written Herz — someone who justi¬
fiably could be assumed to have the greatest interest in the subject — that
he was offering a colloquium privatum on anthropology, and that he was plan¬
ning to transform this subject into a proper academic discipline. His main
purpose in doing so was:
To introduce by means of it the sources of all the sciences that are concerned with
morals, with the ability of commerce, and the method of educating and ruling human
beings, or all that is practical. In this discipline I will, then, be more concerned to seek
out the phenomena and their laws than the first principles of the possibility of modi¬
fying human nature itself.^62
Kant also assured Herz that this wouldn't be dry academic stuff, but an
entertaining occupation, and that his empirical observations were meant
to teach his students the rudiments of prudence and even wisdom. He also
felt it necessary to point out explicitly that he would not address questions
concerning the mind-body relation. If we take this seriously, then we may
say that Kant's lectures on anthropology were first conceived as a kind of
empirical psychology in the service of practical concerns. Empirical psy¬
chology was traditionally treated in metaphysics. Kant broke with this
tradition. Indeed, from the time he began lecturing on anthropology, he
no longer treated that subject very extensively in his lectures on meta¬
physics.^63 The lectures were "popular" both in the sense that he treated his
subject matter "popularly" and in the sense that his lectures were well
attended. He also lectured on mineralogy in the winter of 1770—71, re¬
sponding to a demand from the minister in Berlin that mineralogy and the
laws concerning it {Bergrechte) should be taught in Königsberg. Kant, who
was charged with the supervision of a collection of rocks and minerals, was
probably better qualified than anyone else in Königsberg to teach it, and
so he did; but only for a semester.^64
Kant still lectured every day. During the summer semester he usually
taught logic, and during the winter, metaphysics. Thus in the summer of
1770 he taught (on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday) logic from
7:00 until 8:00, and then again from 8:00 until 9:00 (privately), and "uni¬
versal practical philosophy as well as ethics" from 9:00 until 10:00. On
Wednesdays and Saturdays he lectured on physical geography from 8:00