TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

The Lectures on Pedagogy stem from a course on practical pedagogy that the philosophy faculty at the University of Königsberg was required to offer as well as to rotate among its professors. Kant taught the course four times: winter semester 1776–7, summer semester 1780, winter semester 1783–4, winter semester 1786–7. His text the first time he offered the course was Johann Bernhard Basedow's Methodenbuch für Väter und Mütter der Familien und Völker (Altoona and Bremen, 1770). In 1774 Basedow had founded the Philanthropinum Institute in Dessau, a Rousseau-inspired educational experiment that Kant greatly admired. (See also Kant's Essays Regarding the Philanthropinum, pp. 100–4 in this volume.) From 1780 on Kant was required to use his former colleague Friedrich Samuel Bock's book, Lehrbuch der Erziehungskunst zum Gebrauch für christliche Eltern und künftige Jugendlehrer (Königsberg and Leipzig, 1780). However, in keeping with his general practice regarding the “required text rules” that were common at the time, Kant's own lecture notes follow neither Basedow nor Bock at all closely.

Friedrich Wilhelm Schubert, co-editor of the first collected edition of Kant's works, reports that towards the end of his life Kant offered his lecture notes on pedagogy – “which according to the habit of the philosopher consisted in individual scraps of paper (einzelne Papierschnitzel)” – to his younger colleague Friedrich Theodor Rink, “in order to select out from them the most useful ones for the public.