232 Kant: A BiographyThe objections and criticisms made by Herz, Lambert, Mendelssohn,
and Schulz caused Kant to rethink the project. Thus in June 1771 he wrote
to Herz regarding the letters of Lambert and Mendelssohn that these two
men had "entangled [him] in a long series of investigations."^159 He was now
working on his book
under the title The Limits of Sensibility and Reason. It would contain and treat some¬
what extensively the relation of the basic concepts and laws that are meant for the world
of sense together with the sketch of the nature of aesthetics, metaphysics and morals.
I spent the winter going through all the materials for this, surveyed, weighed and cal¬
ibrated everything. However, I finished the outline for this only recently.^160
Almost a year later, in February 1772, he reported to Herz that "so far as
my essential aim is concerned, I have succeeded and ... now I am in a po¬
sition to bring out a 'Critique of Pure Reason'."^161 But it turned out that he
was not ready, after all. At the end of 1773 he wrote to Herz that he could
perhaps have published something, and that he had spent "great effort...
on the not inconsiderable work that I have almost completed." Because he
did not want to present something incomplete, he had held off publication
until the following Easter.^162
Yet three years later - by the end of 1776 — he realized that he would not
be finished with the Critique "before Easter," and that he needed "part of
next summer" as well.^163 In the summer of 1777 he spoke of "an obstacle"
that kept him from publishing it. This obstacle was "nothing but the prob¬
lem of presenting these ideas with complete clarity." His "investigations
which earlier were devoted piecemeal to varied topics in philosophy have
gained a systematic form, and have guided me gradually to the idea of the
whole which first makes possible the judgment about the value and the in¬
terdependence of the parts."^164 At the beginning of April 1778, Kant had
to deny rumors that parts of the Critique were already in print. He blamed
distractions that hindered him from publishing a book that would "not take
up many sheets of paper."^165 Thus the summer of 1778 saw him working
"indefatigably" at the Critique, still hoping to finish it "soon."^166 He had
at this time "little sketches" ("kleine Entwürfe'^1 '')}^6 ''^1 Work on these sketches
took Kant again much longer than he had anticipated, for it was three years
later, namely on May 1, 1781, that Kant could write to Herz that in "the
current Easter book fair there will appear a book of mine, entitled Critique
of Pure Reason." This book, he said, contained "the result of all the varied
investigations, which start from the concepts we discussed under the head¬
ing the sensible world and the intellectual world."^168