Childhood and Early Youth 55not know whether Kant explicitly formulated this thought for himself dur¬
ing his school years, but we do know that this was his considered opinion
late in life.'^12 As he acknowledged,
It is very difficult for any single individual to extricate himself from the tutelage [Un¬
mündigkeit] that has become almost nature to him.... Statutes and formulas, those
mechanical tools of the rational employment, or rather wrong employment, of his
natural gifts, are the fetters of an everlasting minority. Whoever throws them off
makes only an uncertain leap over the narrowest ditch because he is not accustomed
to this sort of free motion. Therefore there are only few who have succeeded by their
own exercise of mind both in freeing themselves from incompetence and in achieving
a steady pace.^113
Kant was in 1740 far from making the "uncertain leap over the narrowest
ditch," and perhaps the ditch was not quite as narrow as it seemed to him
when he wrote this passage.
It should be added that during Kant's youth men and women lived seg¬
regated lives in Königsberg, and the atmosphere was rather stuffy. Thus,
even "pregnant" was not a word that could or should be used by young
women, and showing much of the "neck, in the back or in front" was strictly
verboten.^114 Education, especially among the class of tradesmen, was re¬
stricted to males. Indeed, it was unusual for girls to get much education
beyond the bare basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic. "Kinder, Küche,
Kirche" really did define the lives of women to a large extent. Accordingly,
Kant, like almost all of his contemporaries, had little occasion for social
interaction with the opposite sex during his youth.
Königsberg: "A Fit Place for
Acquiring... Knowledge of the World"?Kant's youth was thus characterized by a stark contrast between a loving
home in which he was encouraged and accepted, and a stern and gloomy
school life, in which natural inclinations were for the most part suppressed.
Though both his family and his school were religious, though both were
even Pietistic, the contrast between the two could not have been more strik¬
ing. Kant was luckier than some of his friends. He did not have to live at
the Collegium Fridericianum, but could escape to his home in the evenings;
and since he had a long way to walk every day through the streets of Königs¬
berg, he also got to know life from yet another side.
Königsberg is often described either as a desolate and isolated "backwa¬
ter town" of eighteenth-century Germany, or as a "frontier city" of Prussia.