Prior to this publication, the few who knew Kant respected him and regarded him as brilliant. Most of his publications until this point, however, had been less remarkable.
In hindsight, scholars have found indications in some of those early writings which point toward the development of what would become Kant’s trademark thinking. The centrality of space and time, and Kant’s distinctive understanding of them, appear, at least in part, in passages like this:
They who hold this disquisition superfluous are confuted by the concepts of space and time, conditions, as it were, given by their very own selves and primitive, by whose aid, that is to say, without any other principle, it is not only possible but necessary for several actual things to be regarded as reciprocally parts constituting a whole.Qui hanc disquisitionem insuper habent, frustrantur conceptibus spatii ac temporis, quasi condicionibus per se iam datis atque primitivis, quarum ope, scilicet, absque ullo alio principio, non solum possibile sit, sed et necessarium, ut plura actualia se mutuo respiciant uti compartes et constituant totum.
Kant’s peculiar doctrine that time and space are not only somehow products of the rational mind, but also the instruments by which that mind processes sensations into perceptions and ultimately forms concepts, is not only one of the foundational cornerstones of Kantian metaphysics, but rather also represents a possibility of moving beyond the stalemate which existed between Newton’s view of space and Leibniz’s view of space.
One scholar, J.H.W. Stuckenberg, sees one of Kant’s early publications, titled De Mundi Sensibilis atque Intelligibilis Forma et Principiis, as a turning point both in Kant’s career and in the written expression of Kant’s characteristic thought. Stuckenberg writes:
In order that he might become a professor, it was necessary for him again to present a Latin dissertation. In its subject and treatment the one prepared for this occasion was worthy of the man who was called to teach metaphysics, and it is historically significant from the fact that in it Kant for the first time publicly gave some of the most important principles afterwards developed in the “Kritik.” It was a discussion of the difference between sensation and understanding, with the title, “The Form and Principles of the World of Sense and of the Intellect.”
Kant’s thought took shape over time, as John Henry Wilbrandt Stuckenberg traces it through Kant’s correspondence.
There is some orthographic ambiguity surrounding Stuckenberg. It probably started as Johann Heinrich Wilbrandt, but might also have been Johannes. Wilbrandt also occasionally appears as Wilbrand (without the ‘t’) or even as Wilburn. Sometimes the ‘l’ is doubled to Willbrandt, Willbrand, or Willburn.
Kant understandably saw his Kritik as properly not being metaphysics, but rather as something logically prior to metaphysics, a foundation which would make metaphysics possible and determine its scope, limits, and methods. Stuckenberg writes:
Kant's correspondence also indicates that he frequently changed his plans. When the book was already in press, he wrote to Herz that the “Kritik” “contains the results of all kinds of investigations, which began with the ideas which we discussed under the title of the Mundi Sensibilis and Intelligibilis” referring to his Inaugural Dissertation. At other times he expected to limit the contents much more. It may surprise some that at any time Kant regarded such a “Kritik” as lying outside of the sphere of metaphysics; but this significant passage occurs in a letter written to Herz in the winter of 1774-75: “I shall rejoice when I have finished my transcendental philosophy, which is really a critique of pure reason. I shall then work on metaphysic, which has only two parts, namely, the metaphysic of nature and that of morals, of which I expect to publish the latter first ; and I already rejoice over it in anticipation.” At this time, therefore, he held the view which he also held for years after the “Kritik” appeared, that it was only the preparation for metaphysics; nevertheless he regards it as belonging to transcendental philosophy. His letters and books, together with his last manuscript, show that his view of metaphysic was subject to numerous changes.
Kant’s development, then, demonstrates a number of changes in his views, but also a continuity from his 1770 publication, and perhaps from even earlier writings.
It is, of course, a matter of close textual reading to determine to which extent scholars find forerunners of Kant’s critical philosophy in his pre-critical writings, and to which extent scholars read into those early texts ideas which might not actually be there. But an evenhanded reading of the 1774/1775 letter by Kant to Herz clearly manifests, as Stuckenberg notes, the mature Kantian view.
