Silent Years 233Soon after its publication, Kant had to defend himself against charges
that he had introduced in his book an esoteric new language that made it
all but impossible to understand his philosophy. He blamed this difficulty
on the way in which the published version was written. In a letter to Garve
in 1783, he admitted that, although he had taken a long time to think
through the different problems, he put together the text that was finally
published rather quickly. Therefore,the expression of my ideas — ideas that I had been working out painstakingly for more
than twelve years in succession - was not worked out sufficiently to be generally un¬
derstandable. To achieve that I would have needed a few more years instead of the four
or five months I took to complete the book.Kant was thus one of the first to admit that his writing was more difficult
than it might have had to be, but he excused himself by pointing to his
relatively advanced age (he was by then nearly sixty) and his fear that he
might not be able to finish the system as a whole if he spent too much time
polishing his writing. But he also hoped that people would "get over the
initial numbness caused unavoidably by a mass of unfamiliar concepts and
an even more unfamiliar language (which new language is nevertheless
indispensable)." The "main question," the question "on which everything
depends" was formulated clearly enough, or so he thought.^169
There were thus at least two different decisive events in Kant's philo¬
sophical development toward critical philosophy, one occuring around 1769
(the rejection of the continuity thesis), the other taking place around 1771
(the discovery of Hume's problem). If these events were the first two "steps"
toward the Critique, then they were followed by a third step that was per¬
haps less decisive, but was nevertheless very important, namely, Kant's
formulation of the systematic whole around 1778. First, the criticisms by
others and his reading of the last section of Hume's Treatise forced him to
reconsider his strong claims for the ability of reason. The culmination of
this development can be seen in his letter to Herz of February 21, 1772.
Significant parts of Kant's philosophical position of 1775 can thus be
found in the so-called Duisburg Nachlass and in some of the transcriptions
of his lectures. It was only during the period between 1777 and 1780 that
he "discovered," or better, began to formulate, the principle governing the
whole, and thus also began composing the main sections of the Critique}^10
What had first been conceived as a short book that would present an
elaboration of the doctrines advanced in the Inaugural Dissertation, had
become a very long book indeed. It was 856 pages long, and most of its parts