434 Notes to Pages 42—46
- See Justus Moser, Patriotische Phantasien (1774-1786), for instance, especially the
chapters "Rich People's Children Should Learn a Trade," "Of the Deterioration
of the Trade in Smaller Cities," and "Accordingly Every Scholar Should Learn
a Trade." Rink, Ansichten, pp. 6f. and iof, argued that the Prussian government
had a fundamental influence on Kant's moral outlook, and asked (rhetorically):
"Could this strict demand for law in his system not be at least indirectly the result
of the strict care of law in his Fatherland, and could it not form the basis of its
character?" It is also interesting how Rink connected Pietism with the Prussian
government. Though he regretted that "the king dared to rein in the religious faith
of his subjects and forced them to believe what he considered in their best inter¬
est," he still thought that the apparent "oppression of opinion" (Meinungszwang)
was not really harmful (p. 8). - Wasianski, Kant, p. 245.
- Ak 6, pp. 236, 464.
- Ak 9, p. 480.
- Such speculations about what might or might not have influenced Kant in his early
childhood so that it affected his mature work must remain just that, speculations.
As Mary Fulbrook has shown, Pietism was "evidently a quite flexible ideology,
capable of representing many different social groups." While it is not reducible to
the particular views of any one of the social groups, in eighteenth-century Königs¬
berg it was identified with townspeople, artisans, soldiers, and working men. See
Fulbrook, Piety and Politics, p. 43. Fulbrook also argues that "the particular cir¬
cumstances of individuals" have a great influence on "the content and power of
religious orientation" (p. 189). I can only agree. Puritanism in England, Pietism in
Württemberg, and Pietism in Prussia played entirely different political roles. Thus,
"Puritanism cannot be ignored in the genesis of the English resistance to abso¬
lutist rule; nor Pietism in the successful establishment of absolutism in Prussia.
What is required is an analysis of the patterns of combination of elements: of the
ways in which different projects, with different resources, and different goals and
interests, interrelate in specific historical situations." Similar considerations are
relevant for explaining the role of religion in the lives of individuals. The social
strata of individuals are at least as important as their religious orientations. And
the lives of shopkeepers and artisans did not radically differ in different countries
during the eighteenth century. - One might say that the ethos of the guilds provided some of the material princi¬
ples of Kant's morality, while the Pietist insistence on the necessity of a certain
kind of motivation was influential as a formal principle. - Hippel, according to Maker, Kant in Rede und Gespräch, p. 95. Mortzfeld, Kant's
first biographer, spoke of the "leaden destiny of punishment" in this school (see
Maker, Kant in Rede und Gespräch, p. 75). - Ak 10, p. 117.
- Ak 7, p. 486.
- Ak 25.2 (Anthropology Busolt), p. 1496.
- See Heiner F. Klemme, Die Schule Immanuel Kants. Mit dem Text von Christian
Schiffen über das Königsberger Collegium Fridericianum (Hamburg: Meiner Verlag,