8
Problems with Religion
and Politics (1788-1795)
Strained Friendship: "Writing for Kant"K
ANT had said in his Preface to the second edition of the Critique of
Pure Reason (April 1787) that he would no longer engage in disputes
with his critics because he would be spending all his time working out "the
system behind this propedeutic" (Bxliii). Jachmann observed that during
this time, which was that
of the greatest maturity and power of his mind, when he was working on the critical
philosophy, he had no greater difficulty than to think himself into the system of some¬
one else. Even the writings of his enemies he could understand only with the greatest
effort because he could leave his own original conceptual system only for short peri¬
ods. He usually admitted this himself and usually gave to his friends the task to read
for him, and to report to him the content, i.e. the main results, of foreign systems in
comparison to his own, and it was perhaps for this reason that he left the defense of his
system against his enemies to his students and friends.'
This statement of Jachmann is a little misleading, because Kant did not just
"leave" this task to his students and friends; he actively encouraged and
sometimes even forced them (if only by his powers of persuasion) to de¬
fend his system. One of the friends enlisted to this task was Schulz, who
produced four reviews of books on and by Kant in 1787, one in 1788, and
some pieces on Kant for Eberhard's Philosophisches Magazin in 1790.^2 An¬
other one was Kraus. Schulz had little difficulty with his task. Kraus, on
the other hand, found it very difficult to write, either for Kant or for him¬
self. His review of Meiner's History of Philosophy in 1787 had cost him
"frightful strain" and three months of his time. Kant asked for more.
Kraus's next project was a review of a book by Ulrich, namely his Eleu-
therology, or On Freedom and Necessity. It appeared on April 25, 1788, in
the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, and it was finished soon after the review
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