142 Kant: A BiographySo Kant had already been accused of being an idealist in 1763, almost
twenty years earlier than is generally known.
The reaction outside Königsberg was more favorable. Resewitz reviewed
the book positively in the influential Briefe die neueste Literatur betreffend.^20 *
This review made Kant well known throughout Germany. Most impor¬
tantly for Kant, however, it made his name in Berlin. Krickende, who had
studied in Königsberg and then gone to Berlin, wrote to Scheffner in
November 1764:Magister Kant has here [in Berlin] uncommon credit. Sack and Spalding have sung him
a true panegyric song, and called him the subtlest philosophical brain, who had the gift
to present the most abstract truths in the simplest way and to make them distinct for
everyone. Magister Weymann is an oxymoron in the judgment of the examiners, and
the scribbling of two lifetimes will not get him out ofthat. ... There will soon be signs
and miracles at the University of Königsberg,... and meteors to be seen.^203
As a matter of fact, Krickende's prediction was premature.
If The Only Possible Argument represented a reworking of old ideas, the
Observations dealt with new concerns. In it, Kant's aesthetic and literary
preoccupations come to the fore. The work was written more from the point
of view of an "observer" than from that of a "philosopher." It has four sec¬
tions. The first introduces the concepts of the beautiful and the sublime,
the second shows how these concepts are exhibited by human beings in gen¬
eral, the third shows how they are represented in men and women, and the
last how they are found in nations. Much of the Observations must strike us
as dated, as the expression of sentiments long since become passe. A woman
is to have a "beautiful understanding" and a man a "deep understanding";
and a learned woman might as well grow a beard. "The Spaniard is earnest,
taciturn, and truthful." The "Italian appears to have a feeling mixed from
that of a Spaniard and that of a Frenchman," and so on. Some of his ob¬
servations seem silly today, others are annoying, and still others touching.
To be sure, there is irony in some of these passages. Kant's writing is play¬
ful at times, but this does not mean that he did not endorse most of what
he said.
I am not sure whether the little book "richly discloses the personality of
the author."^206 In fact, it is somewhat doubtful that it does. If any of Kant's
books wears "the mask of elegance" or Galanterie, it is this one. What we
get is not so much heartfelt sentiments as the prejudices of an era. Though
Kant shared these prejudices, of course, they are not what defines his per¬
sonality. That some of these prejudices survive in his lectures on anthro-