A Palingenesis and Its Consequences 181Kant excused himself in a letter to Lambert, dated September 2,1770,
for having failed to answer the latter for four years, by saying that he could
not have brought himself to send "anything less than a clear outline of this
science [metaphysics] and a determinate idea of its method."^141 He claimed
that he had found this outline and the corresponding idea of the method
only a year earlier, namely in 1769. It was thus a kind of methodological
skepticism that preceded Kant's first attempts at critical philosophy.
That some form of moderate metaphysical and methodological skepti¬
cism characterized for Kant the stage for his own critical philosophy can
also be seen from some of his frequent descriptions of the development of
metaphysics — which, in some ways, are really semi-autobiographical ac¬
counts of his own development. Thus he claimed that the "first step in
matters of pure reason, marking its infancy, is dogmatic. The second step
is sceptical; and indicates that experience has rendered our judgment wiser
and more circumspect" (A761=6789), while the third step is constituted
by his critical philosophy. In the Preface to the first Critique he argued that
the rule of metaphysics was at first "dogmatic" and "despotic," that inter¬
nal disputes as well as "sceptics, a species of nomads" often challenged this
rule, and that "in more recent times" Locke had attempted to put an end
to the controversies between different forms of dogmatism and skepticism,
but that he had failed:
And now, after all methods, so it is believed, have been tried and found wanting, the pre¬
vailing mood is that of weariness and complete indifferentism - the mother, in all sci¬
ences, of chaos and night, but happily in this case the source, or at least the prelude, of
their approaching reform and restoration. For it at least puts an end to that ill-applied
industry which has rendered them thus dark, confused, and unserviceable.^142
This indifferentism was for Kant not the effect of "levity but of the matured
judgment of the age, which refuses to be any longer put off with illusory
knowledge" (Axi).^143 It was, he thought, the harbinger of change for the
better, a necessary prelude to the "tribunal" of the "critique of pure reason"
(Axii). Kant had reached the stage of indifference at least by 1768.
It would, however, be wrong to restrict this "indifferentism" or "me¬
thodical skepticism" only to the final stage of a development that Kant
underwent between 1755 and 1768. Skeptical reserve and respect for the
skeptical tradition (both ancient and modern) appear to have played a con¬
siderable role in Kant's thought from the very beginning. Thus he observed
in one of his earliest reflections (roughly dated around 1752-56) that dif¬
ferences in opinion give rise to skepticism; and he talked with apparent