The ‘Herz’ Question

Abstract

On 1 May 1781, shortly before its publication, Kant wrote in a letter to Marcus Herz (Corr, AA 10: 266) that the Critique of Pure Reason would finally appear, almost ten years after he first indicated to Herz that he was working on a book under the title ‘The Bounds of Sensibility and of Reason’ (Corr, AA 10: 123), and more than nine years after he had announced he was ‘in a position to bring out a critique of pure reason […] [and] to publish it within three months’ (Corr, AA 10: 132). The writing took evidently much longer than Kant had anticipated.¹ The only recorded evidence of Kant’s thoughts concerning his project in the so-called silent decade between 1770 and 1781, in which he published next to nothing of significance, are his Reflexionen, in particular the so-called ‘Duisburg Nachlass’ from around 1774–75, and a series of letters to Herz.²