Thus spake Friedrich:
“Kant’s joke. — Kant wanted to prove, in a way that would dumbfound the whole world, that the whole world was right: that was the secret joke of this soul. He wrote against the scholars in favor of popular prejudice, but for scholars and not for the people.”
Nietzsche, *The Gay Science*, section 193)
By “popular prejudice” Nietzsche means beliefs in God, freedom of the will, and the immortality of the soul, all of which Kant defends.
(Nietzsche’s title reminds me of an anecdote told by my colleague in political science, Jules Gleicher, who said that when he was a graduate student at the University of Chicago in the 1970s he learned the hard way that reading The Gay Science while riding public transportation was not advisable.)
(See also my episodes on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals in the Philosophers, Explained series.)