Problems with Religion and Politics 379particularly in your book Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, as well as in
shorter treatises. We expected better things of you as you yourself must realize, how
irresponsibly you have acted against your duty as a teacher of the youth against our
paternal purpose, which you know very well. We demand that you give at once a most
conscientious account of yourself, and expect that in the future, to avoid our highest
disfavor, you will be guilty of no such fault. ... Failing this, you must expect unpleasant
measures for your continued obstinacy.
This was serious business. The "unpleasant measures" would certainly have
meant dismissal or forced retirement without pension, and they could have
included banishment. Like Wolff in 1723, Kant in 1794 was holding his
post at the pleasure of His Highness. At seventy years old, the prospects
of moving would have looked even less inviting to him than they had ear¬
lier. Furthermore, resistance would not have made any difference to the
developments in Prussia.
Kant was not the only one affected by the king's order. It was directed
against all the "renegade preachers, school teachers and professors," singling
out Niemeyer and Rösselt at Halle, Reinbeck at Frankfurt (Oder), and
Kant in Königsberg. The infamous Schulz, who had advocated a thorough¬
going determinism in a book reviewed by Kant himself, had already been
dismissed. Borowski, who talked to Kant during this period, said that Kant
was fully prepared to lose not only the bonus that Frederick William II had
granted him earlier, "but also his entire salary." Kant was not frightened
by this possibility because he had invested his money wisely and had be¬
come independently wealthy. While he had not amassed a fortune, as Hip-
pel had done, he was well off. Thus he "spoke... with great calm and
explained expansively (breitete sich aus), how advantageous it was, if one
was a good economist and therefore did not have to crawl even in such sit¬
uations."^197 Yet nothing happened to him. Kant's reputation was probably
one of the things that saved him from more serious consequences. Thus
his reprimand came in the same year in which he became a member of the
Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg.^198
Kant decided to give in. Indeed, according to the views he had articu¬
lated in the essay on "Theory and Practice," he had to give in. On Octo¬
ber 12 he answered, outlining two concerns of the king as he saw them:
(1) that he had been misusing his philosophy to disparage religion, and
was "opposing" the king's "paternal purpose," and (2) that he should no
longer publish anything "of the sort" in the future. Kant argued he had not
been guilty of disparaging religion in his lectures. He was not negligent in
his duty as a teacher of youth. Nor was he negligent in his duty as a teacher