76 Kant: A Biographyproblem. The main reason for this was his guarded and limited endorsement
of Leibniz's theory of preestablished harmony in the Reasonable Thoughts
of God, the World and the Soul of Human Beings as well as of All Things in
General of 1720. The sections concerned with the human soul led him
"against his expectations to the Leibnizian theory," although he did not
endorse preestablished harmony as the absolute truth but only as the most
reasonable hypothesis. He was soon attacked by the Pietists. They argued
that universal harmony contradicted the freedom of the will required by
the true Christian faith.
Marquardt was much less timid than Wolff himself, arguing that all
bodily phenomena could be completely explained at the level of bodies. At
the same time, these phenomena could also be explained at the more fun¬
damental level of the substances, because the soul could create all represen¬
tations on its own. Since God had to create the best of all possible worlds,
he had to have established a correspondence between body and soul, or
phenomena and substances.^63 Marquardt supplemented his a priori ar¬
gument by a posteriori arguments that were meant both to prove pre-
established harmony and to disprove occasionalism and physical influx. As
a strict Wolffian, he remained opposed to the Pietism expressed in Wolf-
fian terms that became common in Königsberg under Schulz. Kant may or
may not have taken courses in philosophy and mathematics from him.
Still more important, perhaps, were Carl Heinrich Rappolt (1702—1753),
Johann Gottfried Teske (1704-1772), Christian Friedrich Ammon (1696-
1742), and Martin Knutzen (1713-1751). Rappolt was an associate pro¬
fessor of physics. He was more or less Wolffian in orientation, but was also
deeply influenced by British sources. Rappolt was also a declared enemy
of Pietism. His views had been influenced mainly by Kreuschner, the first
Wolffian in Königsberg, and by Fischer, the Wolffian who was most hated
by the Pietists. It was Fischer who caused Rappolt to abandon his studies
in theology and to turn towards physics. Annoyed by the Pietist intrigues,
he wrote in 1728 to Gottsched: "Here all science seems to be without use,
and one does not so much consider whether someone has learned something
solid as whether one knows to adapt to the manners of Halle."^64 He had
good reason to be angry. Teske, favored by the Pietists, was appointed a
full professor of physics in 1729, even though he had studied physics for
only two years.^65 In 1729—30 Rappolt went to England to study physics and
mathematics, and in 1731 he obtained the degree of Magister in Frankfurt
(Oder). In 1731 and 1732 he lectured repeatedly on the English language,