378 Kant: A Biography
In some ways, the draft of this essay is alarming. It can be considered as
a sign of megalomania. The only thing Kant could accept as important in
the development of metaphysics from the time of Leibniz and Wolff was his
own work. Everything is contained in his own philosophy. Neither Hume
nor Lambert nor Mendelssohn seem to have made any contribution to the
progress of metaphysics. Neither Leibniz nor Wolff are given a fair hear¬
ing. Kant, at seventy, found it difficult to free himself from his own philo¬
sophical views and to think "from the point of view of everyone else." It
almost seems as if he lost his sensus communis.
At the same time, the philosophical discussion in Germany was moving
away from his ideas. Reinhold had put forward his own Elementarphilosophie
as an improvement of the critical position. Gottlob Ernst Schulze's Aen-
esidemus, an attack on the "Kant-Reinholdian" position, was seen as a
serious challenge.^195 Fichte's review of the book in the Allgemeine Literatur-
Zeitung early in 1794 made clear he was about to abandon Reinhold's prin¬
ciples, and his On the Concept of a Doctrine of Science, the so-called Wissen¬
schaftslehre, made good on the promise. Schelling published as a response
an essay On the Possibility of a Form of Philosophy in General, still in the
same year, and Maimon's Essay toward a New Logic or Theory of Thought
(also of 1794) took a new direction as well. It may not yet have been ap¬
parent to Kant or to most of his contemporaries, but his own brand of crit¬
ical philosophy was falling out of fashion. A few years later (in 1798), in a
summary of the three most important "trend-setting events of the age,"
Friedrich Schlegel did not even mention Kant at all, but spoke instead of
the French Revolution, Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre, and Goethe's Meister.^196
Sic transit gloria mundi!
Why did Kant not submit his answer to the Academy before the dead¬
line of June 1,1795, and why did he choose not to finish it? The answer is
not to be found in a sudden realization that such a submission might be in
bad taste. Rather, it is explained by the events that took place in the sec¬
ond half of 1794.
Consequences: The Threat of
"Unpleasant Measures for ... Continued Obstinacy"On October 1,1794, Wöllner, at the special order of the king, wrote to Kant:
Our most high person has long observed with great displeasure how you misuse your
philosophy to distort and negatively evaluate {Herabwürdigung) many of the cardinal
and basic teachings of the Holy Scripture and of Christianity; how you have done this