layer, but the core which transmutes them into philosophy is the ongoing
struggle in intellectual space.
The Network and Its Conflicts
German Idealism began with Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason in 1781, and by
the end of the decade it had erupted into a far-flung movement lasting down
into the 1820s. To understand why it should have emerged in this way, we
must start further back, with the pre-Idealist network from which Kant ap-
peared. Creative networks beget further creativity, and the intersection of such
networks drives up the level. Why should such a network have come into
existence at Königsberg on the Baltic 300 miles east of Berlin? In part because
Königsberg was the traditional university in the original east Prussian territory
(although conquest had acquired Halle, in central Germany); Königsberg en-
joyed a special connection with the new capital, remaining the site where
Prussian kings were crowned. And again, why then should creative networks
be fostered by Berlin, as late as 1800 an unattractive garrison town on the
eastern plains with sand blowing in the streets? (Safranski, 1989: 121). Because
under Frederick the Great, Prussia was the expanding geopolitical power of
northern Europe. In emulation of the cultural greatness of his French enemies,
Frederick had imported academicians from Paris, along with dissident (and
therefore patronage-needy) stars such as Voltaire and La Mettrie. Combine this
with Frederick’s anti-clericalism, part of the drive to build a strong state by
subordinating the church, and one can see a cultureless marchland conqueror
quickly becoming a magnet for Enlightenment intellectuals. In sociological
theory, at the outermost causal layer, the geopolitical and economic rise or fall
of states shifts the location of resources, expanding the material bases for some
intellectual networks at the expense of others. Networks realign; new philo-
sophical positions appear.
Kant and his contemporaries grew up in a situation where opportunities
for careers as culture producers were expanding, if spartan and competitive.
In connection with the Prussian innovation of a conscript standing army came
the first compulsory public elementary schooling, spurring further educational
expansion at all levels. The growth of an educated and anti-clerical bureaucracy
fostered a publishing industry; by the 1760s Berlin had its own intellectual
circle outside the Academy of Sciences centered on publishers and writers such
as C. F. Nicolai and Moses Mendelssohn (see Figure 12.1). What was happen-
ing in Prussia was emulated by many of the Kleinstaaterei. The geopolitical
fragmentation of central and western Germany made competition in the new
cultural marketplace of literary publication a substitute for military glory on
the part of the smaller states. The structure made possible not only Berlin and
Intellectuals Take Control: The University Revolution^ •^623