of formal education at this time. The leaders of educational reform all had personal
experience of one of the main alternative systems, and were strongly motivated to
escape this alternative as a degradation of the autonomy of the teacher. The only
remaining career path would have been to become a schoolmaster while waiting
for a pastorate to open up; such positions were extremely low paying and isolated
from most intellectual networks, whereas tutoring at least held out the possibility
of contact with cultivated circles of aristocratic or upper-bourgeois society.- Despite periods of stagnation in enrollments, notably 1830–1860, in general the
German university system was on a solid footing after 1810, quite the opposite of
its precarious position in the 1700s. Similarly, the criterion that professors’ career
advancement depended on their research publications built up gradually, becoming
dominant throughout Germany by around 1850 (Jarausch, 1982; McClelland,
1980: 148, 171–172, 242–247). - Success on Kant’s intellectual development (Beiser, 1992; Ameriks, 1992; Werk-
meister, 1980; Guyer, 1987). For positions and network details of the Wolffians,
Pietists, and Berlin Academicians, see DSB (1981) and EP (1967). - In his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786). Kant continued this
project to the end of his life, leaving work from the early 1800s to be published
posthumously (Friedman, 1992: 185–191, 199; Werkmeister, 1980: 101–128). The
maturity and validity of a science depended on how far it moved along this path.
Kant held that chemistry, especially in the version of Stahl, presented only empirical
principles, not yet necessary ones; with the development of quantitative chemistry
in the 1790s, Kant gave his endorsement to Lavoisier’s system. - Fichte described the fundamental method of Idealism: “It shows that what is first
set up as fundamental principle and directly demonstrated in consciousness, is
impossible unless something else occurs along with it, and that this something else
is impossible unless a third something also takes place, and so on until the
conditions of what was first exhibited are completely exhausted, and this latter is,
with respect to its possibility, fully intelligible” (Fichte, [1794–1797] 1982: 25). - “There is no need for premature alarm at the fact that this proposition expressly
contradicts the first principle... It is sufficient that this conclusion follows by
correct inferences from established premises, no less than that which it contradicts.
The ground of their unity will emerge in due time” (Fichte, [1794–1797] 1982:
153; cf. pp. 98 and 226): “All contradictions are reconciled by more accurate
determination of the propositions at variance; and so too here. The self must have
been posited as infinite in one sense, and as finite in another.” - Fichte’s own summary of “the essence of transcendental idealism” states: “The
concept of existence is by no means regarded as a primary and original concept,
but is viewed merely as derivative, as a concept derived, at that, through opposition
to activity, and hence is a merely negative concept. To the Idealist, the only positive
thing is freedom; existence, for him, is a mere negation of the latter” (Fichte,
[1794–1797] 1982: 69). The identification of one’s personal self with freedom and
with the Eternal and Absolute is stressed particularly strongly in Fichte’s popular
manifesto The Vocation of Man, written in 1800 at the height of his identification
with the Romantic movement. The theme was carried on by the other Idealists at
1008 •^ Notes to Pages 650–656