It seems to me that people everywhere these days are at pains to divert attention away from the real influence Kant exer ted over German phi- losophy, and, in particular, wisely to overlook the value he attributed to himself. First and foremost, Kant was proud of his table of categories, and he said with this table in his hands: “This is the hardest thing that ever could have been undertaken on behalf of metaphysics.” – But let us be clear about this “could have been”! He was proud of having discovered a new faculty in humans, the faculty of synthetic judgments a priori.