"All-Crushing" Critic of Metaphysics 239is the most careful observer of his evacuations, and he ruminates often at the most in¬
appropriate places, turning over this material so indelicately that one is often tempted
to laugh in his face. The same thing almost happened today, but I assured him that the
smallest oral or written evacuation gave me just as much trouble as his evacuations a
posteriori created for him.^2
As early as 1777 Kant had written to Herz about "insufficient exoneration,"
about "accumulating feces" or constipation, resulting in "bloatedness"
and the need to take purgatives, which left his constitution in a state of tur¬
moil. He took an entire page to discuss his symptoms, his approach to ob¬
taining relief, and a theory that might explain both.^3 Nor were the com¬
plaints restricted to the lower part of his body. Kant felt that it was ultimately
the obstructions of the bowels that caused distractedness and periods of
confused thinking (benebelter Kopf) from which he was beginning to suf¬
fer. These complaints, though comical-sounding, made his life quite mis¬
erable. Nor were they merely mental phenomena. His digestive system was
in some kind of disorder, and the medical knowledge of the time did not
admit of a real cure. Accordingly, Kant's attempts at managing the symp¬
toms by dietetic means were really the only course open to him. His over¬
anxious concern with the state of his body was the result of a real need.
Kant was getting close to sixty years old. Many of his younger friends would
die at a much younger age. Hamann died when he was fifty-eight, Hippel
died at age fifty-five. Both lived much harder than Kant; and Kraus, who
was almost as careful as Kant, failed to reach fifty-five. Furthermore, the
last years of his three friends were punctuated by serious illnesses, while
Kant never got seriously ill. When he published his Critique, he was fifty-
seven, and he would live almost another twenty-three years. He himself
attributed his long life to the hypochondriacal care with which he watched
his body.
Since we can no longer hope to discover the physiological cause (or
causes) of these symptoms - Kant himself thought it was a problem with
his stomach (Magenmund) — we should be careful in speculating about
them. To claim that the affliction was psychosomatic, or that it was caused
by his philosophy, is just as much a mistake as it is to claim that his philo¬
sophical achievement was in some sense caused by his hypochondria.^4
Kant's critical philosophy may well be viewed as a "dietetic" response
to metaphysical excesses, but this is only one way of viewing it — and not the
most important one. As he himself pointed out, dietetic regimen as "the
art of prolonging human life leads to this: that in the end one is tolerated
among the living only because of the animal functions one performs - not