Silent Years 201haps against its own intentions, that any fundamental reliance on reason
was a mistake. What we must rely on is sensibility and faith.
By publishing in 1771 the translation of the Conclusion of Book I of the
Treatise, Hamann wanted to accomplish the same thing, namely to remind
those who relied all-too-confidently on reason that this is always a serious
mistake. Furthermore, the text also holds out reliance on natural beliefs
or Glaube as a solution to the inevitable despair that follows from philos¬
ophizing. Human nature is not only stronger than human reason, it also
provides the solution to all the problems that philosophy creates. Be a
philosopher, but above all be a man. Don't take philosophy too seriously.
Be skeptical even of skepticism. Rely on faith rather than reason. The main
addressee was Kant, but he meant to remind his public of this as well. The
translation of Hume should be seen as Hamann's veiled response to Kant's
dissertation. Hamann reminded Kant that his new dogmatism about pure
reason, a dogmatism very much at odds with his earlier "pseudo-Humean"
phase, is a dead end, promising only the kind of despair that Hume evokes
in the "Night Thoughts." He also reminded Kant that Hume had already
overcome this despair with his concept of "belief" or "faith." Yet Kant,
who was listening to Hume, Lambert, Mendelssohn, and Herz in revising
his speculative philosophy, did not have ears to hear Hamann's more rad¬
ical criticism.Kant's Moral Philosophy Around 1770:
"All Morality Is Based on Ideas"
That the first data of moral experience greatly concerned Kant in 1769 can
be seen from his notes for the lectures ofthat period. In them, Kant con¬
trasts sharply those systems that found morality on feeling with those that
found it on reason. Indeed, he claims that all moral systems must be divided
in that way: they derive morality either from feeling, or from reason.^43
Accordingly, he is also concerned with reevaluating the role of the moral
sense. In 1764 he had emphasized the importance of the moral sense for
both the first formal and the first material principles of morals. Around
1770 he made claims like the following: "The doctrine of moral feeling is
more a hypothesis to explain the phenomenon of approval that we give to
some kinds of actions than one which could determine maxims and first
principles that hold objectively and tell us how we should approve or re¬
ject something, or act or refrain from acting."^44