Kant: A Biography

Notes to Pages 254-261 481

duced Kraus's translation of an essay on influenza by a certain Fothergill that had

appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine of February 1776 (see Ak 8, pp. 6-8). This

Introduction and the circumstances surrounding its writing is interesting in the

context of Kant's lifelong fascination with medicine as well as his relationship with

a member of the faculty of medicine at the University of Königsberg.

29. Ak 10, p. 271.


30. Ak 10, p. 273.


31. Hamann, Briefwechsel, IV, p. 319, see also pp. 323, 331.


32. Hamann, Briefwechsel, IV, p. 336.


33. Hamann, Briefwechsel, IV, p. 341; see also pp. 344, 350. For further details see Ak 4,
    pp. sg8f.


34. Hamann, Briefwechsel, IV, pp. 376, 400, 418.


35. Kant, Prolegomena, p. 123 (Ak 4, p. 374). Thus the second edition of his first
    Critique, like many of the textbooks and popular treatises of the time, contains a
    "Refutation of Idealism," but quite unlike most of these, it lacked a "Refutation
    of Skepticism."


36. Kant, Prolegomena, ed. Beck, p. 123 (Ak 4, p. 374). This position comes close to
    his own view in the Inaugural Dissertation. Though sensitive knowledge is not
    "sheer illusion" in the Inaugural Dissertation, the ideas of the pure understand¬
    ing and reason (which are not clearly differentiated in the Inaugural Dissertation)
    are the only genuine parts of metaphysics.


37. Kant, Prolegomena, ed. Beck, pp. iof. (Ak 4, pp. 26of.).


38. Kant, Prolegomena, ed. Beck, pp. 6f. (Ak 4, pp. 258f).


39. Kant, Prolegomena, ed. Beck, p. 5 (Ak 4, p. 257).


40. Kant, Prolegomena, ed. Beck, p. 67 (Ak 4, p. 320).


41. Kant, Prolegomena, ed. Beck, p. 80 (Ak 4, p. 332).


42. Kant, Prolegomena, ed. Beck, pp. io8f. (Ak 4, pp. 359^).


43. Hume, Enquiries, pp. nf.


44. Hume, Enquiries, pp. 26f, 44m


45. Hume, Enquiries, p. 16.


46. Kant, Prolegomena, ed. Beck, p. no (Ak 4, p. 361). See also Bxxiv: "on a cursory
    view of the present work it may seem that its results are merely negative, warning
    us that we must never venture beyond the limits of experience. Such is in fact
    its primary use ... So far as our Critique limits speculative reason, it is indeed
    negative."


47. Hume's principle is today perhaps better known by P. F. Strawson's name: "Kant's
    principle of significance." It is, as he says, a principle "with which empiricist
    philosophers have no difficulty sympathizing." Kant's "espousal of the principle
    of significance and in his consequential repudiation of transcendent metaphysics,
    Kant is close to the tradition of classical empiricism, the tradition of Berkeley and
    Hume." "Kant's principle of significance" is a principle of meaning for Strawson.
    Kant was not necessarily concerned with meaning per se. See P. F. Strawson, The
    Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (London: Methuen,
    1966), p. 16.


48. Kant, Prolegomena, ed. Beck, p. 104 (Ak 4, p. 356).


49. Kant, Prolegomena, ed. Beck, pp. iO4f. (Ak 4, pp. 356f).