Founder of a Metaphysics of Morals 311tion of Idealism, a new version of the chapter on the paralogisms, a par¬
tial revision of the chapter on phenomena and noumena, and a number of
minor changes and additions. All of these changes were designed to make
the book easier and to play down the "idealistic" component of the work.
There was also a slightly greater emphasis on moral and religious prob¬
lems, which can be explained by Kant's more clearly formulated concerns
about these matters during the years between the first publication of the
Critique of Pure Reason and the second edition. However, on the whole, the
work remained the same.
Kant's philosophical theories were being discussed in Königsberg. Es¬
pecially his moral philosophy seems to have been the focus of attention of
some. Thus Hamann went on April 17,1787, to a church service where Karl
Gottlieb Fischer (1745-1801), one of Kant's earliest students in Königs¬
berg, was preaching on the Sermon on the Mount and arguing that the
command "Do not judge!" really meant "Be gentle in judging!" This also
meant for Fischer that we must realize that we can judge only actions and
not dispositions or Gesinnungen. "Gesinnungen cannot be judged."^156 With
this, Fischer might seem to have taken a position opposite to that of Kant.
Yet insofar as Kant also claimed that we could not really know our disposi-
tons, they were not as far apart as they might seem. Whether Kant would
have appreciated this sermon as much as Hamann is doubtful, although
he generally did like to read Fischer's "carefully crafted" sermons.^157
Critique of Practical Reason: "The Starry Heavens
above Me and the Moral Law within Me"The Critique of Practical Reason carries a publication date of 1788. How¬
ever, copies of the work were already available in Königsberg at Christmas
of 1787, and Kant had finished the manuscript almost six months earlier.
On June 25, 1787, Kant wrote to Schütz: "I have finished my Critique of
Practical Reason so far that I think I will send it next week to the printer
in Halle."^158 He went on to say that this work was better suited than any
other to deal with his critics. He mentioned Feder and Abel, but he had in
mind others who had criticized him as well.^159 Feder's On Space and Causal¬
ity, which had appeared earlier that year in Göttingen, was an attempt to
prove against Kant that there could be no a priori knowledge.^160 J. E Abel's
Plan of a Systematic Metaphysics (Stuttgart, 1787) was an unsystematic and
eclectic theory that was, according to Kant, designed to establish a kind of
knowledge that was supposed to be somewhere in the middle, between a