404 Kant: A BiographyUnfinished Religious Business: "The Nonsense
Has Now Been Brought under Control"On November 10, 1797, Frederick William II died, and Frederick Wil¬
liam III assumed the throne. Frederick William II had stood all his life in
the shadow of his predecessor, Frederick the Great. Yet he had fought what
he thought was the good fight for Rosicrucianism. In his moral outlook,
Frederick William III resembled less his father than his great-grandfather
Frederick William I, but he lacked both the vision and the resolution of
his ancestor. The forty-three-year reign of Frederick William III was undis¬
tinguished. One of his ministers (von Stein) complained that Prussia was
governed by "a mediocre, inactive, and cold man."^76 From Kant's point of
view, however, the change was good. One of the king's first actions was the
closing of Wöllner's creation, the Religionsexaminations-Kommission. Wöll-
ner himself was severely reprimanded early in 1798, and on March 11 was
dismissed without a pension. The Edict Concerning Religion, the cap¬
stone and symbol of Wöllner's policy, "was never formally repealed, but
it was allowed to fall quietly into desuetude."^77
Kant lost no time. In the fall of 1798 he published The Conflict of the
Faculties. This book brought together three essays Kant had written at dif¬
ferent times, namely, the essay on the relation between the philosophical
and the theological faculties, the essay on the "old" question of whether
the human race was progressing, and a short essay, "On the Power of the
Mind to Master Its Morbid Feelings by Sheer Resolution." The collec¬
tion was preceded by an Introduction. In it, Kant gave the full text of the
1794 letter of reprimand by Frederick William II and his own answer. Not
content just to relate the letter, he also commented on the entire affair,
saying that "the further history of this incessant drive toward faith ever
more estranged from reason" was well known. Theologians were no longer
examined but made to profess their faith and to beg for repentance. This
"nonsense has now been brought under control."^78 There was again an
enlightened government, which was releasing the human spirit "from its
chains."^79
What follows the Introduction is a mixed bag (or, if you will, "bundle").
Even though Kant tried to unify these three disparate themes into a book
by assigning the second essay to "The Conflict of the Faculty of Philoso¬
phy with the Faculty of Law," and the third to "The Conflict of the Fac¬
ulty of Philosophy with the Faculty of Medicine," there is no real conflict
discussed in these essays. It is only the first essay that deals with such a