226 Kant: A BiographyWith this, Kant, who lived "door to door" with Starck, dismissed Herder's
work out of hand. He also seemed to be taking the side of Starck. This was
certainly how Hamann saw it.
Kant, while not a Freemason himself, took the side of the Freemason
against the fundamentalist Christian, Hamann. While he disliked the se¬
crets of Freemasonry as much as the rites of Christianity, he appreciated
their fundamental goals. It was certainly no accident that many of his
friends were Freemasons, but some of them seem to have been even more
conflicted than Kant was. Thus Hippel, one of the leading Freemasons in
Königsberg, was also a believing Christian. He found the two difficult to
reconcile, especially since he was also a friend of both Hamann and Kant.
We can only imagine the conversations that Hippel, Kant, and others had
about these matters, but it is important to remember that they were con¬
cerned about these issues and that discussion of them played an impor¬
tant part in their lives. When Hamann attacked "highly praised reason,
with its universality, incapability of error, its enthusiasm, certainty and
evidence" as a "false idol (Ölgötze), who has been given divine attributes
by a crass and superstitious unreason," he attacked Starck together with
Kant and Hippel.^143 When Hippel satirized in his Kreuz- und Querzüge
certain abuses in the society of Freemasons, he was not only trying to draw
a line between himself and people like Starck, but also seemed to be crit¬
icizing Kant.^144
Starck advanced quickly at the university. This was clearly due — at least
in part - to his good connections in Berlin. He held the right views, as far
as the officials of Frederick II were concerned, and his connections with
Freemasonry did not hurt him either. Kant, who could thank very much
the same people for obtaining his own professorship, would have felt at
least some affinity with Starck. They talked with each other, and it is clear
that they found points of mutual interest. In any case, the similarity of
Kant's views with those of Starck can hardly be overlooked. Kant may even
have written to Hamann at Starck's request.
If Kant felt some affinity with Starck, he had little or no appreciation
for another newcomer to Königsberg, who also came to live in Kanter's
house, namely Abraham Johann Jakob Penzel (1749-1819). He had ar¬
rived in Königsberg after fleeing from Würzburg, where he had been in¬
volved in a duel. In Königsberg he was tricked into enlisting in the Pruss¬
ian army, ending up in a regiment stationed in Königsberg. There Penzel
became a good friend of Kraus and Hamann. A geographer and a classi-