324 Kant: A BiographyHerr Professor, you should now really have a new coat made for yourself Kraus took
the philosopher's suggestion very well, and with fun and wit the conversation contin¬
ued by discussing as an important matter the color, the material, and the cut of his new
clothes; and within a few days Kant received his newly clad Kraus with praise and
laughter.^229
Apparently, it was not only Kant who reminded Kraus to take care of his
clothes. Even his own students made a point of telling him that he could
not go to official occasions dressed as he was.
When these two philosophers went together on their walks through
Königsberg, which they frequently did, they were "the object of amaze¬
ment." Kraus and Kant looked very much the same. Both were short and
very lean. They looked like brothers, but their manners were different.
Kant was deliberate and hardly ever showed his emotion. Kraus was lively
and animated, a fast speaker, who was quick to laugh even at his own jokes.
Kraus also liked to walk quickly, but when he went with Kant they pro¬
ceeded at a slow pace. Kant had his head almost always turned toward the
ground and tilted to one side. His wig was almost always out of order and
lying on his shoulder. This complemented Kraus's usually disheveled ap¬
pearance. The pair must have been the very picture of two absent-minded
professors.
Kant and Kraus had quite different ideas about philosophy, but it ap¬
pears that they thought — Kant especially - that their theories were com¬
plementary rather than opposed. Kant was the theoretician, whose philos¬
ophy Kraus thought was "pure speculation, which floats, as it were, above
life, and considers life only in a speculative concern." Kraus thought that
Kant was "the greatest master of his time." But he also felt that philosophy
needed to be applied to real life. He was the practical philosopher, inter¬
ested in economics and law. So in his courses on moral philosophy he taught
in accordance with David Hume and Adam Smith. He also taught many
other courses on practical matters, such as economics and applied math¬
ematics. Many felt that Kant and Kraus formed the two poles for study at
the university of Königsberg. Each contributed something important, and
together they gave to the students salutory philosophical balance.
Kant liked Kraus very much.^230 Jachmann, who should have known be¬
cause he was Kant's amanuensis during this period, describes it as follows:
Kant was an especially honorable friend of Kraus. He spoke almost daily of him with
expressions of true devotion, and he assured me that he admired the learnedness
and the zeal of the great man for the common good just as much as his character. That