196 Kant: A Biographyhypothetical) things can exist."^29 It's just a matter of language that it seems
to be temporal. For similar reasons, the principle of contradiction needed
the condition "at the same time"; but more important than this, Mendels¬
sohn revealed that he could not convince himself that "time is something
merely subjective." His argument ran like this: Succession is a necessary
condition of the representations of finite minds. Finite minds are not just
subjects, they are also objects of representation in the minds of God and
other human beings. Consequently, succession is also necessarily objec¬
tive. If succession is a reality in representing creatures, then why can it not
be a reality in sensible objects? The objections to this way of conceiving
time are far from obvious. Time, which according to Leibniz is a phe¬
nomenon, has, like all appearances, both subjective and objective aspects.
"The subjective is the continuity we attribute to it; the objective is the
succession of alterations that are equidistant consequences [rationata] of
a common ground."^30
About two months earlier Lambert had criticized Kant's "excellent
dissertation" in a letter to him. Lambert recognized that Kant's specula¬
tions had their source in his own work. Kant wanted to make a sharp dis¬
tinction between sensible and intellectual things, and he claimed that things
that involved space and location differed in kind from things that must be
eternal. He himself had said as much in the New Organon of 1764, but, and
this was important, he had spoken only of existing things, whereas Kant
wanted this to apply to all things. Are the truths of geometry and chronom-
etry sensible or also intelligible, that is, eternal and immutable? Perhaps they
are both. In any case,
Till now I have not been able to deny all reality to time and space, or to consider them
mere images and appearance. I think that every change would then have to be mere
appearance too. And this would contradict one of my principles (No. 54 Phenomenol¬
ogy). If changes have reality, then I must grant it to time as well.^31
There must be something in existing objects that corresponds to time and
space.^32
Kant knew already in June 1771 that Herz, his student and respondent,
would publish in 1771 his Reflections from Speculative Philosophy (Betrach¬
tungen aus der spekulativen Weltmeisheit), a commentary on his Inaugural
Dissertation.^33 He expected much from it. Though he later, following a
review by Lambert, did not think so highly of it, he did consider it impor¬
tant, at least at first.^34
The book is written as a series of letters to a friend about Kant's phi-