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‘Nachschrift eines Freundes’: Kant on Language, Friendship and the Concept of a People

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2011

Susan Shell
Susan Shell
Affiliation:
Boston College
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Extract

Kant's brief ‘Postscript of a Friend’ serves as a peculiar coda to his life work. The last of Kant's writing to be published during his lifetime, it is both a friendly endorsement of Christian Gottlieb Mielcke's newly competed Lithuanian–German and German–Lithuanian Dictionary and a plea in Kant's own name for the preservation of minority languages, Lithuanian in particular. This support for minority languages has no visible precedent in his earlier writings, in which national, civic and linguistic identities and associated loyalties tend to overlap. Indeed, Kant's understanding of the commonwealth as nation-state seems predicated on the fact or myth of ethnic and linguistic unity and homogeneity. The same apparent lack of precedent also applies to the Nachschrift's singling out as a people of peculiar civic merit of the Lithuanians, who are not otherwise mentioned in any of Kant's published or unpublished writings. The work thus raises an obvious question: why does Kant devote his last published work (and declining powers) to a topic and cause in which he does not seem to have taken much earlier interest?

Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 88 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © Kantian Review 2010

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References

Notes

1 I am indebted to Jenks Library, Gordon College, and to Randall M. Gowman, Assistant Library Director, for generously providing access to their rare original copy of Mielcke's dictionary [Littauisch–deutsches und deutsch–littauisches Wörterbuch/worinn das vom Pfarrer Ruhig … ehemals heraus gegeben zwar zum Grunde gelegt, aber mit sehr vielen Wörten, Redens, Arten und Sprüchwörten zur hälfte vermehret und verbessert worden von Christian Gottlieb Mielcke …]. My treatment of the work's three prefaces is based upon the Gordon College text. So far as I know, the prefaces by Jenisch and Heilsberg are available only in the original.

2 Sabaliauskas, Algirdas, We, the Balts [Mes Baltai], trans. Milda Bakšytâ-Richardson, ed. Richardson, R. E. (Vilnius: Science and Encyclopedia Publishers, 1993), p. 136Google Scholar; quoted in Mininger, J. D., ‘Nachschrift eines Freundes: Kant, Lithuania, and the praxis of Enlightenment’, Studies in East European Thought, 57 (1): 4–5 (2005)Google Scholar.

3 Fulbrook, Mary, Piety and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 168CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 In his preface, Mielcke estimates the total number of Lithuanian subjects in all of Prussia, following the fnal partition of Poland, to be as many as 200,000.

5 Mininger, ‘Nachschrift eines Freundes’, p. 6.

6 See Johann Erich Biester's letter to Kant of 11 June 1786 (10: 453). All references to Kant cite the volume and page number of the Akademie edition (Kant, Immanuel, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Preuβische, Königliche (later Deutsche) Akademie der Wissenschaften [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1902-])Google Scholar.

7 Kuehn, Manfred, Kant: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 275CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On relations between Kant and Jenisch, see also Kant's letter of 14 May 1787 (10: 486); Jenisch had done Kant the favour of revealing the name of an anonymous reviewer of the Critique of Practical Reason. Jenisch was also the author of a 1796 defence of Kant's metaphysical, moral and aesthetic thought. For a somewhat more negative assessment of Jenisch's character, see the ‘Biographic sketch’ in the Cambridge University Press edition of Kant's correspondence (pp. 586–8).

8 See his letters of 20 April and 22 May 1796 (12: 72–81 and 12: 83 respectively). The dating of Heilsberg's letter to Kant of 22 May 1796 is presumably coincidental.

9 See note 1 above. The pages of the prefaces in Mielcke's dictionary are not numbered in the text.

10 Jenisch's emphasis here on sketching a ‘portrait’ of the human race, and on ‘philosophic observation’, is reminiscent of Kant's own very early Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime.

11 See Nerija Putinaitė, ‘Kant und Donelaitis: über den litauischen Volkscharakter’, Pädagogische Universität Vilnius, Lehrstuhl für Ethik: ‘Als Kant in den ersten Studienjahren/im ersten Studienjahr bei Dr. Schulz Theologie studierte, hatte er zwei sehr enge Freunde, die als “Litauer” bezeichnet wurden: Christoph Friedrich Heilsberg und Johann Heinrich Wlömer. In seiner Gedächtnisrede nach dem Tode Kants erinnerte sich Professor Samuel Gottlieb Wald: “Lietuvių atžvilgiu jis turėjo ypatingą palankumą, kadangi jo pirmieji akademiniai draugai, Wlömeris ir Heilsbergas buvo kilę iš Lietuvos, ir jis yra pareiškęs, kad kiekvienas lietuvis turi, polinkį satyrai’, tačiau retai juokiasi” [“Wald's Gedächtnisrede auf Kant”, in: Kantiana. Beiträge zu Immanuel Kants Leben und Schriften, Hrsg. Dr. R. Reicke, 1860, S. 11.]. Diese Information erhielt Wald neben anderen Quellen von Heilsberg persönlich. Nach dem Tode Kants beantwortet dieser als alter Freund des Philosophen die Fragen Walds. Zu dieser Zeit war Heilsberg wohl der einzige Mensch, der Auskunft zum Wesen Kants in dessen Studienjahren erteilen konnte. Heilsberg und Wlömer waren Kants Partner beim Billiard. Zusammen gewannen sie beträchtliche Geldsummen, doch bald wollte niemand mehr gegen sie spielen.

‘Ohne Zweifel waren die zwei besten Jugendfreunde Kants Litauer. Gewiss könnte heute die Frage diskutiert werden, was “Litauer” im damaligen Kontext bedeutete. Zweifellos verwies die Bezeichnung in erster Linie auf den Ort der Abstammung. Heilsberg (1726/1727–1804) wurde in Ragaine Ragnitt geboren, studierte an der Königsberger Universität und war später in Königsberg als Rat für Kriegs- und domenu (Domänen-?) Angelegenheiten tätig. Als Leiter einer speziellen Kommission für kirchliche und schulische Fragen hatte er auch einen nicht geringen Einfuss auf die Belange der Volksbildung in Ostpreuβen. Er war es, der Christian Gottlieb Mielcke eindringlich zuredete, sein deutsch- litauisches und litauisch-deutsches Wörterbuch zusammenzustellen, für das Heilsberg später das Vorwort verfasste. Wlömer (oder Wlöner) (1726–1797) wurde in Pilkainiai geboren, einem fast ausnahmslos von Litauern bewohnten Ort. Nach dem Universitätsstudium zog er nach Berlin, wo er als Kriegsrat und später als einer der höchsten und einfussreichsten Gerichtsbeamten Preuβens arbeitete. Beide Freunde hielten bis zum Lebensende sehr engen Kontakt zu Kant.’

12 Kuehn, Kant, p. 63. These favours may have included, for example, lending the impecunious Kant clothing while his was being repaired.

13 See the letter from Heilsberg dated 22 May 1796 (12: 82–3).

14 ‘Declaration concerning Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre’, 7 August 1799 (12: 370–1). The Declaration specifcally warns of ‘so-called’ friends who ‘think one thing and say another’. For an insightful discussion of the implications of Kant's ‘open letter’ to Fichte, see Fenves, Peter, Late Kant: Towards Another Law of the Earth (New York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 115–16Google Scholar. As Fenves notes, Kant had privately addressed Fichte only two years earlier as his ‘treasured friend’ (12: 221).

15 For a fuller discussion, see Shell, , Kant and the Limits of Autonomy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), Chapter FiveGoogle Scholar.

16 ‘On permissible moral semblance’, Anthropology (7: 152).

17 7: 316n.; Kant, , Anthropology, History and Education, ed. by Zöller, Günter and Louden, Robert [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007], 411nGoogle Scholar. On the likely signifcance of such notes, see the helpful translator's introduction in pp. 228–9 of the above volume.

18 See Refections on Anthropology no. 1497 (15: 774): ‘Poles are weak. Arrogant and obsequious. Russians diffcult to instruct and command. Stiff sensibility.’

19 See the early Refexion 1370 (15: 596), describing the Greeks as the frst people to arrive at concepts, as appears through mathematical demonstration and through law-giving. See also Reflexion 1497 (15: 772) to similar effect. And compare: ‘Poles and Russia are half-oriental peoples. They, namely, [do not think] according to concepts but [breaks off]’ (15: 773).

20 See also Reflexion 1468 (15: 647).

21 Or, alternatively, his ‘propensity for lying’. Otherwise put, his character consists in ‘the attempt not to allow his character to become visible’ (7: 331n). (See here the note added to Kant's handwritten version of the Anthropology.

22 On this point, see Shell, Kant and the Limits of Autonomy, Introduction to Part Two.

23 The dates of the two editions of the Anthropology (1798 and 1800 respectively) suggest that this material was very much on Kant's mind when he was composing the Nachschrift.

24 See for example On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy (8: 167).

25 Note especially the profusion of French synonyms for ‘spirit’ – terms, Kant says, ‘that cannot easily be translated into other languages’.

26 See also in this regard The Metaphysics of Morals on the (German) propensity to servility (6: 437).

27 See, for example, Kant's late unpublished Reflexion 1520 in Reflections on Anthropology (15: 888): ‘Latin language is dominant in Spain, France, Italy; German in the remaining cultivated countries. Slavonic is still Asiatic. All are innoculated with German blood. In England, it is the foundation. Spirit (Roman) and discipline (German). Way of ruling.’

28 On a Newly Uplifted Noble Tone in Philosophy (1796). A sequel (roughly contemporary with Kant's open letter to Fichte) appeared shortly thereafter on the dangers of dishonesty among philosophers. See Announcement of a Near Treaty of Perpetual Peace in Philosophy (8: 421–2).

29 See On a Newly Uplifted Noble Tone in Philosophy (8: 394); see also his Announcement of a Near Treaty of Perpetual Peace in Philosophy (1796), which particularly stresses the theme of philosophic honesty and dishonesty.

30 According to Grimm and Grimm's Wörterbuch, the German “Conzept” still captured the double meaning of the Latin conceptus, which denotes conception in both the intellectual and the reproductive senses. As Kant's extended civic “rebirth” metaphor suggests, the “concept” through which a people becomes a civically self-conscious nation is an example of “conception” in both senses of the term.

31 Kant's views as to his own partly Scottish origins may here also be pertinent. Some contemporary scholars speculate that Kant's paternal ancestors may actually have been Lithuanian. They base their argument, in part, on the fact that his father came from Tilset, which had a large Lithuanian population.

32 I am indebted to Michael Resler for help in parsing Kant's text.

33 Another area of conspicuous silence concerns a third Volklein recently admitted to Prussia in large numbers, namely the Jews. Revival of Hebrew as a spoken, ‘modern’ language was then fourishing in Königsberg, which was home of the frst ‘enlightened’ Hebrew journal, which was edited by Isaac Euchel, a former student of Kant. Modernized Hebrew was intended as a substitute for Yiddish, a Jewish-German-Slavic dialect frequently associated by enlightened Jews with Jewish religious backwardness. Modernized Hebrew as a dual vehicle of both popular progress and return to a (presumably) purer popular-civic origin was thus in several ways a prototype for the treatment of Lithuanian (and Polish) that Kant urges here. Kant could hardly have been unaware of such parallel developments concerning Hebrew. Tellingly perhaps, the Anthropology describes the Jews as ‘a nation of cheaters’, a fact that he attributes to their all being ‘merchants’ and therefore ‘unproductive’ (7: 206n). Why this does not equally apply to the Armenians (another mainly commercial nation) is not entirely clear. On Kant's complex and troubled relationship to Jews and Judaism during this period, see Shell, Kant and the Limits of Autonomy, chapter 9.

34 Toward Perpetual Peace (8: 367).

35 Compare, however: ‘If writings lose almost everything in translation, then it was an accidental play of fantasy dependent on Nationalausdrüken but not self-subsistent beauty. Time sifts all writings, though for many of them one can immediately establish their nativity’ (15: 917). For Kant, it would seem, that which is truly ‘poetic’, and thus ‘universally communicable’, loses nothing essential in being translated from one language into another. Indeed, this is so much the case that translatability is itself a mark of poetic quality. (I am indebted to Corey Dyck for bringing this passage to my attention.)

36 Herder, Johann Gottlieb, Sämtliche Werke, ed. Suphan, B., 33 vols, Berlin, 1877–1913, 13Google Scholar: 368–9. Herder's comment recalls the famous dispute between Diderot and Rousseau, prompted by a similar accusation of wickedness (as the latter saw it).

37 Herder, Sämtliche Werke, 13: 367–8.

38 The part that Keisewetter had most recently reviewed was entitled ‘Reason and language’.

39 See also Opus Postumum (21: 225): ‘[to say that understanding] is derived from experience … is an explanation in a circle … Pure understanding is the faculty of a priori knowledge – but unreason and intentional deception are Herder's trademark.’

40 Kant's highly condensed note is, indeed, even more complicated. On the one hand, Frederick's duplicity reveals his own unwillingness to put morality before religion, an ordering on which human progress, as Kant elsewhere argues, ultimately depends. If even the ‘enlightened’ Frederick cannot be counted on in this regard, the outlook for human progress would seem to be grim indeed. On the other hand, Frederick's private ‘sighs’ over his misanthropic conclusions about the human race betray his refusal to include himself in this general negative judgment. Frederick's bad faith in this regard is also an implicit acknowledgement of the claims that morality continues to make on us. It is thus a ‘confession’ that bears witness, willy nilly, to a ‘moral predisposition within us’ to work against our propensity to evil (7: 333 and 33n).

41 See the ‘Biographic sketch’ in Kant, Immanuel, Correspondence, trans. and ed. Zweig, Arnulf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 580CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Compare Opus Postumum (21: 27) and Anthropology (7: 120).