io8 Kant: A Biographyand dogmatic theology, he never touched. ... he had read Stapfer's foundations of
theology many years ago. His knowledge in this discipline really did not go beyond what
he had learned in Schulz's lectures on dogmatic theology in 1742,1743, which was also
the year in which Stapfer's book appeared.^30
Kant's special interest in Hutcheson and Hume is quite in keeping with
the spirit of the time. Hume's first Enquiry appeared in German in 1755,
and Lessing's translation of Hutcheson's A System of Moral Philosophy
appeared in 1756 under the title Sittenlehre der Vernunft. Mendelssohn and
others in Berlin were at the time just as interested in Hume and Hutche¬
son as were Kant and others in Königsberg. That these interests found
their expression in Kant's lectures almost immediately shows among other
things how carefully he paid attention to developments in Berlin.
As in today's universities, lectures were given during certain circum¬
scribed periods of the year. During the summer semester, courses were
taught from the end of April or beginning of May until the middle of Sep¬
tember. In the winter semester, they were taught from the middle of Oc¬
tober until the end of March or the beginning of April. Kant thus had two
breaks of about a month in April and in September-October.^31 There were
also breaks in the middle of the semester, that is, four weeks in July-August
(a "dog-days break" or Hundstagsferien) and another four weeks around
Christmas and New Year's.^32 Professors lectured for a total of eight months
of the year. During the other four months they had time for other work and
relaxation.
During the semester the pace was grueling. A lecture course usually
took four hours a week, with either two or four meetings a week. On the
"main days," Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, the full professors
gave the public lectures for which the students did not have to pay. The
lecturers and associate professors had to arrange their hours around these
events. On Wednesdays and Saturdays some teachers at the university gave
private tutorials and colloquia. Kant also sometimes conducted disputation
exercises on these days, which lasted an hour each day.^33
To earn a living, Kant had to give many lectures. In the first semester
(winter 1755-56) he lectured on logic, metaphysics, mathematics, and
physics. In the summer semester of 1756 he added geography, and in the
next, ethics, never lecturing less than sixteen hours and at times up to
twenty-four.^34 Kant's textbook in metaphysics was usually Baumgarten's
Metaphysica, which had first appeared in 1739, and in logic it was Georg
Friedrich Meier's Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre of 1752.^35 Baumgarten was