Kant: A Biography

(WallPaper) #1
464 Notes to Pages 159-162


  1. The salary also included "Emolumente" or material goods, such as firewood. This
    was a usual part of the salary in eighteenth-century Prussia (and elsewhere). Given
    the inflationary tendencies of the period, this was significant. But whether or not
    Kant received these goods is not known.

  2. Kant's own phrase (Ak 10, p. 49). During the latter part of the sixties he also
    administrated a collection of stones and fossils, which had been collected by Sat-
    urgus. See Vorländer, Immanuel Kant, I, p. 180.

  3. See also Werner Stark, "Wo lehrte Kant?," p. 91. Hamann reported to Scheffner,
    who was looking for a place to live, that one of his friends had an apartment that
    cost him 40 Thalers a year, but was fairly small. The 62 Thalers would have
    allowed Kant to rent a fairly decent apartment. Yet the sum did not amount to
    much. A student was expected at that time to live on 200 Thalers.

  4. All the works of the sixties, and some of the later ones.

  5. Hamann, Briefwechsel, II, p. 245: "Kant insisted very much to work immediately
    on your return." What he could have done is not clear. But it seemed to involve
    petitioning the minister von Braxein. Kant also seems to have had a hand in the
    appointment of Lindner's successor, Kreutzfeld. See Euler, "Kant's Amtstätig¬
    keit," p. 83.

  6. In a letter to Kant of April 7,1774, Hamann referred to "my friend Dr. Lindner."
    This would have been odd had he considered him at this point Kant's friend as
    well.

  7. Compare Kant, Ak 24.1 (Logik Blomberg), p. 36; "Pyrrho was a man of great in¬
    sights. He had the motto: non liquet, which he constantly held up to the prudent
    sophists to dampen their pride. He was the founder of the skeptics, who also called
    themselves Zetetici. But this sect soon exaggerated skepticism so much that they
    finally doubted everything - even mathematical propositions." Hamann compared
    Kant to Socrates as early as 1759, and he used Hume and (what he took to be)
    Humean arguments in order to persuade Kant that it was "reasonable" to reject
    Enlightenment ideals in favor ofa fundamentalist religious faith. See pp. 118-122,
    this volume.

  8. Ak2, p. 307. See also Ak 20, p. 175: "The doubt which I adopt is not dogmatic but
    a doubt of waiting (Aufschub). Zetetici (zetein) seeker. I will strengthen the reasons
    on both sides. It is peculiar that one is afraid of this. Speculation is not a matter of
    necessity. The cognitions of the latter in regard to ultimate reasons are certain. The
    method of doubting is useful because it makes the soul act not from speculation
    but from healthy understanding (common sense). I seek the honor of Fabius
    Cunctator."

  9. See, for instance, Sextus Empiricus, Selections from the Major Writings on Scepti¬
    cism, Man and God, ed. Philip P. Hallie, tr. Sanford G. Etheridge (Indianapolis:
    Hackett, 1985), p. 32: "Now the sceptic discipline is called the 'zetetic' (search¬
    ing).. ."

  10. Ak 2, p. 308.

  11. Ak 2, pp. 3ogf.

  12. See Martin L. Davies, Identity or History? Marcus Herz and the End of the Enlight¬
    enment (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995), p. 7. See also Steffen Dietzsch,
    "Kant, die Juden und das akademische Bürgerrecht in Königsberg," in Königs-

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