230 Kant: A BiographyIn July of 1777 Moses Mendelssohn, one of the most important German
philosophers of the late Enlightenment, came for a visit to Königsberg.^155
He was perhaps the dominant force on the German philosophical scene
between 1755 and 1785. His work in aesthetic theory and on the nature and
role of sensibility was especially influential, and it would be difficult to un¬
derstand the development of German thought from Wolffian rationalism
to Kantian idealism without paying close attention to Mendelssohn. If he
was received like royalty by the Jewish community, he was treated with
almost equal respect by the philosophical community. Kant and Hamann
were especially happy to see him. After a trip to Memel, Mendelssohn stayed
another ten days in Königsberg (August 10-20). Kant wrote to Herz in
Berlin:
Today Mr. Mendelssohn, your worthy friend and mine (for so I flatter myself), is de¬
parting. To have a man like him in Königsberg on a permanent basis, as an intimate
acquaintance, a man of such gentle temperament, good spirits, and Enlightenment -
how that would give my soul the nourishment it has lacked so completely here, a nour¬
ishment I miss more and more as I grow older! I could not arrange, however, to take
full advantage of this unique opportunity to enjoy so rare a man, partly from fear lest
I might disturb him ... in the business he had to attend to locally. Yesterday he did me
the honor of being present at two of my lectures, d la fortune du pot, as one might say,
since the table was not prepared for such a distinguished guest... I beg you to keep
for me the friendship of this worthy man in the future.. .l5f>One may well wonder what difference such a Mendelssohnian influence
might have made to Kant's critical enterprise. Would the Critique of Pure
Reason — which Kant was busily writing at that time — have looked any dif¬
ferent? We will, of course, never know the answer to such questions.The Developing Conception of a Merely
Propaedeutic Discipline: "Obstacles"In his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics of 1783, Kant "openly con¬
fessed]" that
the reminder of David Hume was the very thing which many years ago first interrupted
my dogmatic slumber and gave my investigations in the field of speculative philosophy
a quite new direction. I was far from following him in the conclusions at which he ar¬
rived by regarding, not the whole of his problem, but a part, which by itself can give
us no information. If we start from a well-founded, but undeveloped thought which
another has bequeathed to us, we may well hope by continued reflection to advance
farther than the acute man to whom we owe the first spark of light.