252 Kant: A Biographyby opposing to each other two genera of sense: the inner and outer one, or by wanting
to merge or transform these two into each other. When the form of internal sensation
is changed into that of external sensation, or when it is mixed up with the latter, ma¬
terialism, anthropomorphism, etc. result. Idealism is the product of contesting the
rightful title of outer sense besides inner sense. Skepticism at times does the one and
at other times the other in order to mix and shake everything into confusion. In some
ways, our author does so as well. He does not recognize the rights of inner sensation... But his idealism still more contests the laws of external sensation and the result¬
ing form and language natural to us.
In short, Kant was too much like Berkeley and Hume.
The review was by Garve, but Feder had heavily edited it. The passages
comparing Kant to Berkeley and Hume had been added by Feder, who
later wrote a great deal against Kant's idealism, offering what he called
"Anti-idealism in Accordance with the Simple and Solid Principles of Com¬
mon Sense." Thinking that Kant was obviously as indebted to Berkeley as
he was to Hume, he could not understand why Kant wanted to put so
much distance between his own thought and that of Berkeley.^22 For better
or worse, this review set the tone and the agenda for the next decade or so.
It became usual to view Kant as a skeptic in the Humean fashion, and to
oppose him with appeals to language and common sense.
Hamann, Kant's friend and critic in Königsberg, essentially agreed
with the Garve-Feder assessment. Kant was a skeptic in a Humean
sense, and therefore indebted to Berkeley. In a manuscript that remained
unpublished during his lifetime, Hamann observed that
a great philosopher has maintained that general and abstract ideas are nothing but par¬
ticular ones, annexed to a certain term which gives them a more extensive signification
at the occasion of individual things. Hume declares this assertion of the Eleatic, mys¬
tic and enthusiastic Bishop of Cloyne, George Berkeley, to be one of the greatest and
most valuable discoveries which has been made in the republic of letters in our time.
First of all, it appears to me that the new skepticism is infinitely more indebted to
the older idealism than this accidental, individual and occasional remark shows to us.
Without Berkeley, Hume would hardly have become the great philosopher the Kritik
declares him ... to be. But concerning the important discovery itself: it lies open and
revealed in the mere usage of language of the most common perception and observa¬
tion of the sensus communis, and it does not need special insight.^23
Hamann had just been reading Malebranche and Beattie's Essay on Truth in
order to find out about the sources of Berkeley's idealism, and thus had a
special reason to see these connections, but pointing them out was appro¬
priate. Like Feder, Hamann accused Kant of being an idealist in Berkeley's
sense, and he also accused Kant of being inconsistent in praising Hume so