212 Kant: A Biographynot provide a set of lecture notes as a source of information for his new
philosophy, he wrote back that it would be difficult for a variety of reasons.
His main reason was that "metaphysics is a course that I have worked up
in the last few years in such a way that I fear it must be difficult even for a
discerning head to get precisely the right idea from somebody's lecture
notes. Even though the idea seemed intelligible to me in the lecture, still,
since it was taken down by a beginner and deviates greatly both from my
formal statements and from ordinary concepts, it will call for someone
with a head as good as your own to present it systematically and under¬
standably." Two months later he again complained that "those of my stu¬
dents who are most capable of grasping everything are just the ones who
bother least to take explicit and verbatim notes; or rather they write down
only the main points, which they can think over afterwards. Those who are
most thorough in note taking are seldom capable of distinguishing the im¬
portant from the unimportant. They pile a mass of misunderstood stuff
under that which they may possibly have grasped correctly."^88 Kant knew
that there were many students who had problems with his lectures, and it
is clear that he did not much care about it. He talked to those who "are
capable" and not to those who are incapable. Indeed, he might well have
catered to the taste of those students who liked obscurity.
Kant made one other telling remark in this context. He said: "Besides,
I have almost no private acquaintance with my listeners, and it is difficult
for me even to find out which ones might have accomplished something
useful."^89 By 1778 Kant seems to have isolated himself almost completely
from his students. For the most part, he did not know them, and they seem
not to have known him. Kant no longer seemed to care much whether his
students got something "useful" out of his lectures on logic and meta¬
physics. He seemed more interested in developing his own theory. Though
his lectures on anthropology and physical geography were easier and more
accessible, emphasizing the useful, much like his earlier lectures in meta¬
physics, this does not seem to have implied closer contact with most of his
students. In any case, he wrote to Herz in 1778 that he "shortened the
section on empirical psychology when he began to lecture on anthropol¬
ogy."^90 This alone would have made the lectures on metaphysics harder.
Baczko was an exception: he did get to know Kant "because [he was] his
frequent listener." Furthermore, while he might not have had success with
books on metaphysics, he did have success with anthropology. Kant noticed
Baczko because the student could help him with many examples. Indeed,
Kant encouraged Baczko to make anthropology his main field of study.