Fabian Burt

This newly discovered autograph by Kant dates from his second term as rector (summer 1788). In this brief document from the archives of the University of Königsberg, Kant notes the Academic Senate’s decision to reject an application submitted by the Academic Secretary, Friedrich Wattmann. It seems that Wattmann had taken out a loan from the estate of the Königsberg Orientalist Georg David Kypke (1724–1779), the administration of which had been entrusted to the Senate in order to establish a charity foundation for destitute students. In his application, Wattmann requested an extension of the deadline to repay the money he had presumably taken unauthorized. Further historical context on this incident is provided.

This paper presents a newly discovered autograph by Kant. The front page contains a draft letter from December 1797 addressed to Johann Daniel Metzger, the president of the Albertus University. The letter concerns a dispute between Kant, Metzger and the chancellor, Georg Friedrich Holtzhauer. Kant protests against the latter’s attempt to remove him from his seat in the Academic Senate. This exchange provides new information on Kant’s biography. The second page contains Kant’s reflections on the doctrine of law (Ersitzung, i. e. acquisition by prolonged possession), the possibility of an a priori history of philosophy, and the philosophy of religion (historical versus rational-moral exegesis of Holy Scripture). These texts were probably written at the end of 1797 or the beginning of 1798.

In his Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755), Kant claims that the Universe has existed for ‘a series of millions of years and centuries’. In light of the authority of biblical chronology, according to which God created the world some 6000 years ago, this claim is remarkable. In this paper, I argue that the novelty of Kant's account of the age of the world does not only lie in the sheer size of the number he gives, but also in the fact that it was motivated by cosmological considerations (as opposed to the proto-geological considerations that motivated other contemporary theories that challenged the biblical dogma). Since Kant does not explain how he comes to claim such a high number for the age of the world, I give two possible reasons that can be reconstructed from his 1755 works, both of which rely on his conception of the vast spatial dimension of the visible Universe. The first reason combines this conception with Kant's cosmogony, the second states that the vast spatial extension of the Universe implies an extremely long duration of its existence due to the finitude of the speed of light.