Kant: A Biography

414 Kant: A Biography

Wasianski reported: "already in 1799, when it [his weakness] was still

hardly noticeable, he said ... in my presence: 'My Gentlemen, I am old and

weak, and you must consider me as a child.'"^120 Jachmann, of course, had

already noticed the "weakness" three years earlier. At another occasion,

Kant explained:

My gentlemen, I am not afraid of death; I will know how to die. I assure you before
God that, should I feel in the coming night that I would fold my hands and say "God
be praised." But if an evil demon was on my back and was to whisper in my ear: 'You
have made human beings unhappy,' then it would be different.^121

Kant felt he had done no such thing. He was content — ready to die. In
fact, he looked forward to dying. Given the choice between life or death,
he would have chosen death. Yet he felt the choice was one that had not been
given to him.^122 He repeatedly said to friends during his final years that
he went to bed every night hoping it was his last.^123 Since his brother, who
was more than eleven years younger than he was, had died in 1799, he might
have felt that this hope was justified.
Yet his wish was not to be fulfilled for a long time. He had to wait an¬
other five years — slowly declining month by month. All his biographers
talk about his increasing weakness. Already in 1798, he hardly ever went
out for a dinner invitation in the evening, and his walks became shorter.^124
Yet what his biographers describe as "weakness" (Schwäche) was not so
much the frailty of his body, but his diminishing mental abilities. There is
indeed something tragic about the way in which one of the greatest minds
who ever lived was reduced to complete helplessness. Nothing, except great
physical pain, was spared him during the final years.
During the period of almost five years that it took Kant to die, his steady
mental deterioration may have made this waiting easier, but the decline of
his body made it more and more difficult. There is nothing extraordinary
about Kant's long-drawn-out decline. Many others have had to suffer
through it, and there are no new lessons to be learned from Kant's dying.
Given the gradual process of decline, Kant did not prove that he knew how
to die any better than anybody else. Death was something that happened
to him. It was a gradual process that first robbed him of his mind and then
of his body.
Gradually, all the regularities that had given order to Kant's life changed.
Though he still got up at 5:00 A.M., he began to go to bed earlier. His walks
now no longer took him far away from his house. He was frail. Theoreti¬
cian that he still was, he developed a peculiar way of walking, trying to make