Problems with Religion and Politics 331found it impossible to continue to write. In a letter of February 1, 1789,
he spelled out the reason as follows: "I told him [Hamann] of my enter¬
prise in a letter... [the review] was a contest of love: who would win the
approval of our teacher? Would it be Herder or me? This is what made my
work attractive and important. I admit that I never worked on anything with
such effort as I worked on this review."^8
This is peculiar. The review that had begun as a defense of Kant had
turned into a "contest of love" for Hamann's favor. Kraus was conflicted
from the beginning. He had to criticize Herder in order to please Kant and
was thereby taking the risk of upsetting Hamann. At the same time, Kraus's
report also indicated a shift that had occurred during his work on the re¬
view. At about the time of Hamann's death, Kraus realized that he could
not follow Kant's approach, and that he had either to follow his own ap¬
proach or to give up the project. Indeed, Kraus formulated to himself per¬
haps for the first time how different his approach was from Kant's:
In general... everything metaphysical is foreign to my nature, and it is useless to force
me to do metaphysics. I can accomplish the goal of my review only ... if I view pan¬
theism as a product of nature.^9In other words, he would follow either the approach of Hume's Natural
Religion or none at all. Kant's metaphysical way of looking at religion was
really foreign to him. In fact, in later self-characterizations Kraus never
failed to point out his tendency toward naturalism and aversion to meta¬
physics. He often also included a quip about how absurd it is to speak of
a philosophy that is characterized by the proper name of a person. Thus
"Kantian philosophy" seemed to him a monstrosity.
Perhaps this break between Kraus and Kant was inevitable, but Kant
did not help matters. In pushing Kraus to do work that he did not want to
do, and in trying to persuade Kraus to promote the critical position with
arguments that were not really his, Kant crossed the line. One of Kraus's
friends wrote:
When Kraus was writing for Kant - for that is what really happened with his afore¬
mentioned metaphysical reviews - Kant first gave him a diamond ring, as apretium af-
fectionis. Kraus was very moved, and showed it to me then. Yet it was not long until the
two men had to give up the union (Verbindung) into which they had entered with this
ring, namely to live only for each other.^10
Whatever one makes of Kant's gift and the union of the two men reported
by this friend of Kraus's, it is clear that they soon became very distant.''
While working on these reviews, Kant and Kraus were also continuing