462 Notes to Pages 151—154
To say that the concept of "hypochondria" was a creation of the Enlightenment is
historical nonsense. Nor did Kant have to wait for the publication of J. U. Bilguer's
Nachrichten an das Publikum in Absicht der Hypochondrie of 1767. Hypochondria
was all around him, in literature (in the novels of Laurence Sterne and Tobias
Smollett, and in Samuel Butler's Hudibras, for instance) and in daily life. The
claim that attempts to keep one's emotion in check lead to hypochondria is psy¬
chological nonsense. Indeed, it seems to be well understood - at least in some
psychological circles - that keeping distressing emotions in check is a key to emo¬
tional well-being, and that expressing emotions (such as anger) too freely is what
leads to distress - not that the Stoics would have disagreed. Finally, it is a mistake
to treat Kant's hypochondria as a uniform phenomenon. His early complaints,
having to do with his chest and palpitations, were different from the complaints of
his later years, which were more "hepatick," as we shall see.
- Susan Baur, Hypochondria: Woeful Imaginings (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1988), p. 22. See also Shell, The Embodiment of Reason, pp. 266-305 (Chap¬
ter 10, "Kant's Hypochondria: A Phenomenology of Spirit," which contains a short
history of hypochondria). Shell's conclusions go too far, however.
- Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. Floyd Dell and Paul Jordan-Smith
(New York: Tudor Publishing Company, 1927), p. 154.
- Baur, Hypochondria, p. 27.
26. Ak 2, p. 266.
27. Ibid.
28. Ak 10, p. 231, see also p. 344; and Ak 23, p. 463; also of interest are Borowski, Leben,
p. 73; Ernst König, "Arzt und ärztliches in Kant," Jahrbuch der Albertus Univer¬
sität zu Königsberg 5 (1954), pp. 113-154.
- Lehmann, "Kant's Lebenskrise," p. 418.
- Josef Heller, Kants Persönlichkeit und Leben. Versuch einer Charakteristik (Berlin:
Pan Verlag, 1924), p. 65.
31. Lehmann, "Kant's Lebenskrise," p. 420.
32. It had already been reviewed in the March 22 issue of the Königsbergische Gelehrten
und Politischen Zeitungen. For more information, see Pia Reimen, "Struktur und Fig¬
urenkonstellation in Theodor Gottlieb von Hippeis Komödie der Mann nach der
Uhr," in Joseph Kohnen (ed.), Königsberg. Beiträge zu einem besonderen Kapitel der
deutschen Geistesgeschichte (Frankfurt [Main]: Peter Lang 1994), pp. 199-263. Reimen
believes that the model is Kant, but she fails to see that Jachmann's description of
Kant, on which she relies, is the Kant of the 1780s and 1790s, not the young Kant
(see pp. 224f). Jachmann claimed that Green was the model. Green was also the
model for a merchant in Johann Timotheus Hermes's novel Sophien's Reise von
Memel nach Sachsen. Hermes and Hippel studied together in Königsberg in 1757.
33. Jachmann, Kant, p. 154.
34. See Gause, Die Geschichte der Stadt Königsberg, II, p. 192; see also Bogislav von
Archenholz, Bürger und Patrizier. Ein Buch von Städten des Deutschen Ostens (Darm¬
stadt: Ullstein Verlag, 1970), pp. 31 if.
35. Archenholz, Bürger und Patrizier, p. 311.
36. Karl Hagen, ""Gedächtnisrede auf William Motherby," Neue Preußische Provincial-
Blätter 3 (1847), pp. I3if.
