ludicrous arrogance and most impudent dicta of their own, which they nevertheless lay down under the disguise of argumentation, because they know they may count upon a credulous public, to whom Kant's writings are not known.[1] And this is what happens to Kant on the part of writers, whose total incapacity strikes us in every page, not to say every line, we read of their unmeaning, stupefying verbiage! Were this to go on much longer, Kant would present the spectacle of the dead lion being kicked by the donkey. Even in France there is no lack of fellow-workers inspired by a similar orthodoxy, who are labouring towards the same end. A certain M. Barthélemy de St. Hilaire, for instance, in a lecture delivered in the Académie des Sciences Morales in April, 1850, has presumed to criticize Kant with an air of condescension and to use most improper language in speaking of him; luckily however in such a way, that no one could fail to see the underlying purpose.[2]
Now others among our German "philosophical trade" again try to get rid of the obnoxious Kant in a different way: instead of attacking his philosophy point-blank, they rather seek to undermine the foundations on which it is built. These people however are so utterly forsaken by all the gods and by all power of judgment, that they attack à priori truths: that is to say, truths as old as the human understanding, nay, which constitute that understanding
- ↑ Here it is especially Ernst Reinhold's System of Metaphysics (3rd edition, 1854) that I have in my eye. In my Parerga I have explained how it is that brain-perverting books like this go through several editions. See Parerga, vol. i. p. 171 (2nd edition, vol. i. p. 194).
- ↑ Nevertheless, by Zeus, all such gentlemen, in France as well as Germany, should be taught that Philosophy has a different mission from that of playing into the hands of the clergy. We must let them clearly see before all things that we have no faith in their faith and from this follows what we think of them, [Add. to 3rd ed.]
