Kant’s Teaching Style

"His lecture was an entertaining discourse.  Jests, wit, and humor were always at his disposal. 

— S. G. Wald [qtd. in Reicke 1860, 18]

“I sit daily at the anvil of my lectern ...” [top]

One of our first glimpses into Kant’s teaching, and one of the very few that Kant himself provides, comes from a letter of 28 October 1759 to Johann Gotthelf Lindner [bio], a slightly younger friend from student days who was serving at the time as rector to the Cathedral School in Riga:

For my part I sit daily at the anvil of my lectern and guide the heavy hammer of repetitious lectures, constantly beating out the same rhythm.  Now and then I am stirred by some nobler inclination, a desire to extend myself beyond this narrow sphere; but the blustering voice of Need immediately attacks me and, always truthful in its threats, promptly drives me back to hard work. [Ak. 10:18-19; repr. in Malter 1990, 50; transl. in Zweig 1999, 56][(full text)]

A number of writers have left accounts of how Kant conducted himself in the classroom.[1]  From the end of his career, we hear that Kant's ...

... presentation is entirely in the tone of ordinary speech and, if you will, not very beautiful. Imagine a little old man who sits bent over, wearing a brown coat with yellow buttons, not to forget the wig and hair bag; imagine also that this little man occasionally brings forth his hands from the buttoned coat where they have been hiding, and makes a small movement with them in front of his face, as one does when one wants to make something fully comprehensible — imagine all this and you will be seeing him to a hair. Even though he does not look all that great, even though his voice is unclear, yet everything that his delivery lacks in form is richly replaced by the excellence of the content. [Purgstall, repr. in Malter 1990, 419][(full text)]

“It was necessary to pay attention ...” [top]

Kant would sit at a little desk, elevated slightly on a platform so that he was higher than the students, and he would often choose a student to look in his eyes while lecturing, using this as a gauge as to how well he was being understood.  Judging from several accounts from across his career, there would have been many students whose eyes Kant must have found discouraging.  After describing Kant's very first lecture (13 Oct 1755), Borowski notes that...

... it was necessary to pay close attention to his lectures.  The gift that many teachers have to make the concepts and material completely clear for everyone, to make themselves understood, even by students who would skip class or be distracted, by repeating himself using different expressions, and essentially to force these students to understand, was clearly not Kant’s.  Everything must be carefully noted, as is only reasonable. [Borowski 1912, 85; repr. Malter 1990, 26] [(full text)]

And again:

Of course, a lively attentiveness was always required.  Without this his lectures couldn’t be understood, and one would get lost. [Borowski 1912, 40-42; repr. Malter 1990, 28-29] [(full text)]

Ludwig Baczko [bio], from the early 1770s, "noticed that many students in Kant's classroom knew even less than me, and I began to believe that they were attending Kant's lectures just to show off" [Baczko 1824; rprt. Malter 1990, 118] [(full text)].  Christian Friedrich Reusch [bio] had a similar experience twenty years later, in the mid-1790s:

To a young man of 15-16 years under those circumstances, not much of his philosophical lectures could be put into a context that made them understandable; what I grasped was an occasional illuminating point or spark in the soul.  I don’t believe that it went any better at that time with the older students.  In contrast, his physical geography lectures were quite understandable, even highly intellectually stimulating and entertaining. [Reusch 1848, 291-2; repr. Malter 1990, 400-2] [(full text)]

[1] On Kant’s manner of lecturing, see Vorländer [1924, i.53-65]; Adickes [1911c; Ak. 14: xxxv]: “his impromptu lecturing is perhaps the reason that his students did not (or not always) write down his lectures verbatim”; Arnoldt [1908-9, v.291]: “Maybe Kant spoke in such a way that the students could write down a verbatim transcript with difficulty.  It appears at least that they tried to, and perhaps two or more taking notes in the same semester exchanged notes in order to fill them out ....”.  Stuckenberg [1882] devotes ch. 3 to Kant’s teaching.

“How often he moved us to tears ...” [top]

Yet for all the puzzlement he surely caused, Kant also connected with many of his students.  Reinhold Bernhard Jachmann [bio], one of Kant’s early biographers and a student of his from the mid-1780s, wrote:

How often he moved us to tears, how often he forcibly shook our hearts, how often he raised our spirit and our feelings out of the fetters of selfish euidaimonism and up to the high self-consciousness of pure freedom of the will! [1912, 133-34; repr. in Malter 1990, 219] [(full text)]

These words concerned Kant's lectures on moral philosophy, and perhaps the same could never have been said of the more challenging lectures on metaphysics.[1] 

Perhaps the best known testimonial comes from Johann Gottfried Herder [bio], Kant's famous student from his early years as a Privatdozent.  Thirty years after leaving the university, Herder wrote the following encomium to his favorite professor:

I had the good fortune to know a philosopher who was also my teacher.  He was in his best years, and possessed the cheerful vivacity of youth which, I believe, has accompanied him even into old age.  His open, thoughtful brow was the seat of undisturbed cheerfulness and joy; language rich in thought flowed from his lips; jokes, wit, and good humor were at his command; and his instructive lectures were the greatest of entertainment.  In the same spirit with which he investigated Leibniz, Wolf, Baumgarten, Crusius, and Hume, and traced the laws of Newton, Kepler, and the physicists generally, he also examined the writings then appearing by Rousseau, namely, his Emile and his Heloise.  He appreciated every physical discovery that came to his notice, and always returned to an impartial knowledge of nature and the moral worth of man.  The well-spring of his lectures was the history of men, of nations, and of nature, as well as natural science, mathematics, and his own experience.  He was indifferent to nothing worth knowing. No cabal, no sect, no prejudice, no ambition for fame, had the least influence over him compared with the development and clarification of the truth.  He encouraged and pleasantly compelled his hearers to think for themselves; despotism was foreign to his mind.  This man, whom I mention with the greatest thankfulness and esteem, is Immanuel Kant; his picture stands pleasantly before me. [From his Letters on the Advancement of Humanity (#79); Irmscher 1991, 424-25; repr. in Malter 1990, 57]

[1] On this see also Mortzfeld’s remarks: “The opinion had spread even among his students that his lectures were hard to comprehend, for which reason most began with his course on physical geography, or with the moral philosophy” [(full text)] [Mortzfeld 1802, 58; repr. Malter 1990, 32].

“A model of punctuality ...” [top]

An early biographer of Christian Jacob Kraus [bio], a student at Königsberg from 1771-78 and later colleague of Kant’s, mentioned Kant as a standard of punctuality, noting that Kraus was nearly as punctual and conscientious as Kant, and that Kant had missed only a single hour in five years, and that this was on account of an illness [Voigt 1819, 180].[1]  Jachmann offered a similar report: ‘Kant was a model of punctuality in all of his lectures.  I don’t remember a single instance, during the nine years that I attended his classes, that he cancelled a period, or that he missed even a quarter hour” [1912, 132; repr. in Malter 1990, 217].  Likewise Rink: “he remained up to the end a very conscientious teacher, and I can’t recall of a single time, other than the usual vacations, that he did not hold class” [Rink 1805, 47; repr. Malter 1990, 158] [(full text)].  And Borowski [bio], a student during the first years of Kant’s career, notes that he never missed a lecture, canceling classes only during the normal academic vacations [1912, 85].

[1] This appraisal of Kant likely stems from Kraus’s own experiences as a student in Kant’s classroom during the early 1770s.  See Stark [1987b].

“He would enter the room in a sort of enthusiasm ...” [top]

Christian Friedrich Jensch, who would have matriculated in time for WS 1763/64, recalled ...

... how interesting Kant was in his lectures.  He would enter the room in a sort of enthusiasm, saying: we left off here or there.  He had memorized the main ideas so deeply and vividly that the entire hour was lived in these alone; often he took little notice of the textbook over which he was lecturing. [Abegg 1976, 251; repr. Malter 1990, 73] [(full text)]

Kant would bring with him his copy of the required textbook used for the class[1] and possibly some notes on loose sheets of paper (some commentator’s mention him bringing a notebook, but perhaps this was referring to his set of notes on Physical Geography, which he used in place of a textbook).  Kant had his textbooks bound and interleaved with blank pages, so that there was ample room for his own notes.  He would never read his own prepared text,[2] nor would he read and comment upon the assigned textbook.  Rather, his voice was conversational, engaged in a discussion with the author of the text.   The textbooks served as organizing principles and as spring boards.  Kant would read a proposition from the textbook, discuss it, criticize it, improve upon it, or support it with his own arguments.  In doing this he often made long asides, which Borowski assures us were nonetheless interesting and useful. 

[1] Purgstall describes the tattered condition of Kant's copy of Meier's logic text: “He always brings the book along.  It looks so old and soiled, I believe that he has brought it daily to class with him for forty years.  All the blank leaves are covered with writing in a small hand, and besides, many of the printed pages have leaves pasted on them, and lines are frequently crossed out, so that, as you might imagine, scarcely anything of Meyer’s Logic is left.” [(full text)]  Even by the early 1760s, Jensch reported that Kant's copy of Baumgarten's Metaphysica was “covered with notes all over.”

[2] In a closing note to his Conflict of the Faculties, Kant describes a pathological condition of his eyes that began occurring when he was forty, and that would leave him temporarily unable to read: “This condition, which does not last longer than six minutes, could be very risky for a preacher in the habit of reading his sermons from the page.  But since, after a suitable preparation I can lecture freely (from my head) in my courses on logic and metaphysics, my own concern was that these attacks might be the precursor of blindness” [Ak. 7: 115].  On Kant’s eye trouble, see also Rink [1805, 90-1; repr. in Malter 1990, 290].

“To think for oneself ...” [top]

Kant noted on numerous occasions that his pedagogical intentions were not to teach beliefs, but rather how to think.  In reflecting back to the Kant of the ‘60s, Herder wrote that Kant “encouraged and pleasantly compelled his hearers to think for themselves”; and Borowski wrote:

Equipped with all the knowledge necessary for the discipline in which he was to lecture, he appeared in his lecture hall with the most unassuming modesty — always reminding us that he would not teach philosophy, but rather how to philosophize, etc. [..] To think for oneself — to investigate for oneself — to stand on one’s own feet — were expressions he uttered constantly. [Borowski 1912, 40, 86; repr. in Malter 1990, 27, 28]. 

And near the end of his career, in his logic lectures of 1792, we find: “Not to learn philosophy, but rather how to philosophize; all else is just imitation” [Dohna-Wundlacken 3; Ak. 24:698].[1]

[1] See also Kant’s Lecture Announcement for WS 1765-66 [Ak. 2:306], the Critique of Pure Reason [A 838/B 866], Bergk [1831a, 211], an-Jäsche [Ak. 9:25], and of course his essay on enlightenment.  This sentiment is discussed in detail by Weisskopf [1970, 103-15].