Kant: A Biography

(WallPaper) #1
454 Notes to Pages 112—116

that "Kant, as a keen observer of himself, changed his way of life in accordance
with years and circumstances."


  1. The Prussian von Wallenrodt took over the administration in Königsberg on Au¬
    gust 6, 1762.

  2. Pisanski, Entwurf einerpreussischen Literärgeschichte, p. xi.

  3. Compare all this to Stavenhagen, Kant und Königsberg, pp. 14—18.

  4. Scheffner, Mein Leben, p. 67.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Stavenhagen, Kant und Königsberg, p. 26.

  7. Wannowski in Maker, Kant in Rede und Gespräch, p. 48; he adds that Kant paid at¬
    tention to fortification, military architecture, and pyrotechnics.

  8. For further details see especially Wilhelm Salewski, "Kant's Idealbild einer Frau.
    Versuch einer Biographie der Gräfin Caroline Charlotte Amalie von Keyserlingk,
    geb. Gräfin Truchsess von Waldburg (1727-1791)" Jahrbuch der Albertus Univer¬
    sität zu Königsberg 26/27 (1986), pp. 27-62.

  9. Ak 11, p. 56. The events he is referring to must have taken place in 1762. Com¬
    pare Maker, Kant in Rede und Gespräch, pp. 56-7.

  10. Unless etiquette required that a guest of higher social standing had to occupy it.

  11. Borowski, Leben, p. 75; he also said that Kant had tried to convince his students
    that one should never be entirely out of fashion in one's dress.

  12. K. A. Varnhagen van Ense, Denkwürdigkeiten des Philosophen Arztes Johann Benjamin
    Erhard in Ausgewählte Schriften, 15.2 (Leipzig, 1874), p. 322.

  13. See Borowski, Leben, p. 75; see also Jachmann, Kant, p. 172. The sword was not
    unusual then. Kant stopped carrying it when merchants did so as well.

  14. There is a nice description of the clothing worn by the clerics in Friedrich Nico¬
    lai, Sebaldus Nothanker (Berlin, 1773), Book 4, section 8. See the recent edition by
    Bernd Witte (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1991), pp. 213-221. See also Book 4, section 1,
    for a description of the dress of a typical Pietist (p. 161). See also Fragmente aus
    Kants Leben, pp. 9 if: "During the first years of his teaching when theological dis¬
    putes were still on the daily agenda, there lived a certain D. and P. S.... accord¬
    ing to whom a class of theologians called themselves S...ner. Apart from their
    quiet Pietistic lives they were also characterized by common clothing and thus
    wanted to be considered for children of the right faith."

  15. Jachmann, Kant, p. 189; compare Borowski, Leben, p. 72.

  16. His attire certainly was fashioned in accordance with this ideal: "Typical attire for
    men included knee breeches, jackets with embroidered vests, and shirts decorated
    with a throat cloth, or cravat, the ancestor of the modern necktie. The hat for men
    throughout the century was the tricorn, a low crowned hat with the brim turned
    up on three sides. By 1790 two other hats were common: a bicorn and a top hat
    similar to the 17th-century Puritan hat." Kant's biographers take pains to point
    out that Kant never changed his hat from a tricorn. When his early philosophical
    theories were dismissed by more orthodox thinkers as "Tändeley," Kant was in
    fact already characterized as belonging to this tradition.

  17. K. W. Böttiger (ed.), Literarische Zustände und Zeitgenossen in Schilderungen aus
    Karl Aug. Böttiger's handschriftlichen Nachlasse (Leipzig, 1838), I, p. 133. This is
    later than the period under discussion (1764) but still relevant.

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