292 Kant: A Biographyreason within a civil post or office (which would include that of a univer¬
sity professor) may and indeed should not be free. Here one must obey.
We must pay our taxes, and a minister or priest must teach what the church
decrees.^70 To restrict public enlightenment would be "a crime against
human nature."^71 While Kant does not want to say that he lives in an "en¬
lightened age," he is willing to say that he is living in an "age of Enlighten¬
ment," that is to say, in an age in which small steps toward an enlightened
age are possible.
Not everyone agreed that this kind of enlightenment was possible or
even a good thing. In 1784, Kant's former student Herder published his
Ideas on a Philosophy of the History of Mankind with the publisher of the first
Critique. It represented the first volume of a very ambitious enterprise. In
that same year a new journal was established that was to become most im¬
portant in the further discussion of Kant's own philosophy, namely the Neue
allgemeine Literaturzeitung of Jena. Kant was asked in July whether he would
not be willing to make "at least a few contributions" and whether he would
be interested in reviewing Herder's Ideas in particular.^72 He agreed, prob¬
ably after looking at Hamann's copy of the Ideas.^13 The review of Herder's
book was to be "a trial." It was due on November 1, and it appeared in one
of the first issues of the journal, namely on January 6, 1785.^74 As was cus¬
tomary, the review appeared anonymously.
Kant's judgment of this work of his former student was negative, and he
did not hold back. Perhaps he even went out of his way to insult Herder.
Thus in the introduction of the review, he did not talk so much about the
book as about the author, saying that he was "ingenious and eloquent,"
demonstrating again his "renowned individuality," and going on to note that
his is not logical precision in definition of concepts or careful adherence to principles,
but rather a fleeting, sweeping view, an adroitness in unearthing analogies, in the wield¬
ing of which he shows a bold imagination... combined with a cleverness in soliciting
sympathy for his subject - kept in increasingly hazy remoteness - by means of senti¬
ment and sensations.^75
He does not expect much from the book, but he will try to seek out its main
theses insofar as they might be profitable.
After a detailed summary of the stages of Herder's argument in the Ideas,
Kant summed up "the idea and final purpose of Part I" as follows:
The spiritual nature of the human soul, its permanence and progress toward perfec¬
tion, is to be proved by analogy with the natural forms of nature, particularly their