"All-Crushing" Critic of Metaphysics 271fence. Complaints to the police did not help. The officers refused to act
until someone in his household was hurt. Kant was bitter: "There will only
be a right to punish [them] when I am sick or dead!"^84
There were also other distractions. During the winter semester of
1783—84, Kant was dean again.^85 During his tenure, Metzger complained
about who was to teach which lectures in the faculty of medicine. First he
sent this complaint to Berlin; later, he talked in secret to someone who
used the information in an anonymous attack on the faculty of medicine
in Königsberg, which appeared in a journal published in Jena. Some of the
senators of the university, including Kant, who, as dean of the faculty of
philosophy, was a member of the senate that semester, wrote to Berlin
to support the faculty of medicine against Metzger. In fact, they called
Metzger a "suspicious witness," and they formulated this suspicion fur¬
ther by pointing out that Metzger was not always "motivated by disinter¬
ested eagerness in his official dealings." This was not all. In this same
context, a professor of medicine in Jena named Grüner insulted the fac¬
ulty of medicine at Königsberg. The professors at Königsberg wanted to
extract an apology from him. Kant, as dean and advisor to the rector, coun¬
seled against such a course of action, not because he wanted to avoid dis¬
putes, but because he was convinced that there was little hope of success.^86
Metzger, of course, knew about all of this. Nor was this the last time that
the two clashed over administrative issues. Kant had gained another en¬
emy in the university.
At least the location of Kant's new home was idyllic. Hasse described it
as follows:
On coming closer to his house, everything announced a philosopher. The house was
something of an antique. It stood in a street that could be walked but was not much
used by carriages. Its back bordered on gardens and moats of the castle, as well as on
the back buildings of the many hundred years old palace with its towers, its prisons
and its owls. But spring and summer the surroundings were quite romantic. The only
trouble was that he did not really enjoy them ... but only saw them. Stepping into the
house, one would notice the peaceful quiet. Had one not been convinced otherwise by
the open kitchen, with the odors of food, a barking dog, or the meowing of a cat, the
darlings of his female cook - she performed, as he put it, entire sermons for them - one
might have thought the house was uninhabited. If one went up the stairs, one would
have encountered the servant who was working on preparing the table. But if one went
through the very simple, unadorned and somewhat smoky outbuilding into a greater
room which represented the best room, but which was not luxurious. (What Nepos
said of Attics: elegant, non magnifies, was quite true of Kant.) There was a sofa, some
chairs, upholstered with linen, a glass cabinet with some porcelain, a secretary, which