Problems with Religion and Politics 353matic, that is, based on principles. His "philosophy of elements," which was
meant to supply Kant's critical philosophy with its foundation, was also
meant to answer all skepticism.
Reinhold was by no means the only follower of Kant who found it nec¬
essary to downplay the critical element in Kant in favor of a somewhat
more dogmatic view, or who built up the straw man of a dogmatic skeptic
in order to destroy it. Ludwig Heinrich Jakob, the first philosopher to give
university lectures on Kant in Halle, was also interested in skepticism.
Between 1790 and 1792 he published what seemed to be the first German
translation of Hume's Treatise. Its first volume contained a long Appendix
of 314 pages, entitled Kritische Versuche über die menschliche Natur (Criti¬
cal Essays Concerning the First Book of David Hume's Treatise of Human
Nature).^90 The expressed goal of the long Appendix was to provide the
"point of view from which Hume's Treatise must be seen." This point of
view was characterized by the following claims: (1) that skepticism is one
of the most important philosophical views (indeed, that it is inevitable given
traditional philosophical assumptions); (2) that Hume's Treatise is the most
perfect expression of skepticism; and (3) that the Critique of Pure Reason
has given us the means to disprove Hume, and therefore all of skepticism.
In disproving Hume, Jakob claimed to be disproving skepticism überhaupt,
for he thought there could be no other justification of skepticism than that
given by Hume.
With these developments a new task for philosophy had arisen, namely,
the founding of all knowledge against skepticism or a fundamental philos¬
ophy. In this foundation, Kant was of extreme importance in this project,
but since he had not finished the enterprise, there was need for other
thinkers to complete his work.
At the same time, many of the older philosophers continued to resist
and attack the critical philosophy. Some of these attacks were vicious. But
J. A. Eberhard's Philosophisches Magazin, which appeared in four volumes
between 1789 and 1792, drew Kant's special attention.^91 Eberhard main¬
tained that Leibniz's system was superior to Kant's: whatever was contained
in Kant's critical philosophy was already better expressed in Leibniz's, and
where Kant disagreed with the Leibnizian view, he was mistaken. Kant was
very upset, as his letters to Reinhold and Schulze during 1789 and 1790
show.^92 He decided to answer Eberhard's attacks. Thus, at the Leipzig
Easter Book Fair of 1790 appeared a short treatise by Kant entitled On a
Discovery According to which Any New Critique of Pure Reason Has Been
Made Superfluous by an Earlier One.