194 Kant: A Biographyappeared eleven years later, was the fulfillment of this promise. In it, Kant
presented to the public for the first time the results of deliberations that had
preoccupied him during the intervening years. Its publication ended more
than a decade of "silence" — and hard work.First Reactions: "We Are... Not Yet Sufficiently Convinced"
The Inaugural Dissertation was reviewed in the Königsberger gelehrte und
politische Anzeigen on Friday, November 22, and Monday, November 25,
- The reviewer was Johann Schulz, who was at that time pastor in a
town named Löwenhagen. Schulz first duly noted the importance of the
dissertation, saying that it was different from most academic exercises and
that it promised the purification of metaphysics from any admixture of the
sensible. Then he offered a detailed summary of the work. In the second
part of the review, he was more critical. Thus he rejected Kant's claim that
intellectual intuition was impossible. Though this claim "is basic to the
entire dissertation," it is "unprovable" because the soul can see "itself"
and everything that happens at present in it by internal sensation. It does not
matter whether these sensations are of external or internal things. Since
time was not just the form of sensation for Kant, but also of thinking, he
could not deny that intellectual intuition was impossible on the basis of the
claim that it was in time. Indeed, Kant wanted to show that space and time
were just principles of the sensible world, but they might well be principles
of both the sensible and the intelligible world, and Kant should prove why
this was impossible. Kant might be right about this, but he certainly did
not prove it. Schulz also objected to Kant's principle of the form of the
intellectual world. Kant thought that it consisted in the dependence of
everything on one. The reviewer "had no hesitation in simply declaring
this to be incorrect." Kant proved that all substances in this world must
depend on a single necessary cause, but he did not prove the converse, that
all substances that depend on the one cause must make up one world. Kant
had made an important beginning in investigating the difference between
the sensible and the intellectual, but much work still remained to be done.
Schulz said that though "we are not yet sufficiently convinced, the vistas,
which this work opens up are nevertheless so estimable that we know of no
work, which could provide better materials for the improvement of meta¬
physics."^23 Kant called the "honest pastor Schulz" the "best philosophical
head he knew in the region."^24 He said that his objection about time as the