Kant: A Biography [Paperback]

Manfred Kuehn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 19, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0521524067 | ISBN-13: 978-0521524063

This is the first full-length biography in more than fifty years of Immanuel Kant, one of the giants among the pantheon of Western philosophers, and one of the most powerful and influential in contemporary philosophy. Taking account of the most recent scholarship, Manfred Kuehn allows the reader to follow the same journey that Kant himself took in emerging as a central figure in modern philosophy. Manfred Kuehn was formerly Professor of Philosophy at Purdue University. A specialist on German philosophy of the period, he is the author of numerous articles and papers on Immanuel Kant.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

For opposite reasons, Kant's life (1724-1804) and ideas are equally difficult to expound engagingly: the ideas, because of their philosophical complexity; the life, because of its uneventful simplicity. Acknowledging as much in his prologue to this earnest biographical effort, Kuehn (of Philipps University in Germany) largely succeeds at this daunting, two-fold task. Nonspecialist readers in philosophy will be intrigued by the lesser-known works of Kant summarized here, such as Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, on the mystical theologian Emanuel Swedenborg, or, more relevant to our own copyright-obsessed times, "On the Injustice of Counterfeiting Books." Seasoned students of Kant will appreciate Kuehn's attention to the genesis of Kant's enormously influential critical philosophy in specific events and epiphanies of his life. Most notably, he explains how a foundational tenet of Kantian thought--that sensation and intellect are discontinuous (propounded in defiance of the then commonly received philosophy of Christian Wolff)--originates in a little-known Latin dissertation that Kant publicly defended in 1770, 11 years before the Critique of Pure Reason appeared. Or again, the categorical imperative, which defines Kantian ethics, owes in part, Kuehn suggests, to the influence on Kant of his long-time English friend, Joseph Green, who first lived the kind of principled life for which Kant then laid the theory. Kuehn's descriptions of Kant's richly inclusive social life, witty conversation and elegant dress will delight all who have wrongly identified the sage of K”nigsberg with dour dispassion. The biography, however, suffers from repetition, digression and excessive attention to characters of only passing general interest. Still, as the first biography of the great philosopher in more than 50 years, this is a welcome addition to the literature.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

This book bills itself as "the first full-length biography of Kant in over fifty years," but it is more than that. Other biographies are available, after all, including neo-Kantian Ernst Cassirer's classic Kant's Life and Thought. But these dated biographies were written without access to the most recent scholarship, and even the Cassirer book is more of an "intellectual biography," devoting more time to an analysis of the major works than to the minutiae of Kant's life. The present work excels in both regards: the explication of Kant's thought (for example, in the seminal Critique of Pure Reason) is exemplary, and the details of Kant's life, time, and influences is rendered so thoroughly that the reader will finish the book knowing Kant and his thinking intimately. (This is not to say that Kant's thought is not difficult: it is.) Keuhn (philosophy, Philipps Univ., Marburg, Germany) has produced a work of the highest quality. For all academic collections and larger public libraries.DLeon H. Brody, U.S. Office of Personnel Management Lib., Washington, DC
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 576 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (August 19, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521524067
• ISBN-13: 978-0521524063
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #471,891 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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61 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The definitive Kant Biography, April 27, 2001

By 

Walter O. Koenig "Amoxtli" (San Diego, California, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Kant: A Biography (Hardcover)

To most persons Kant's philosophical writings are unreadable and are to be avoided, Paul-Heinz Koesters, author of "Deutschland deine Denker" called "The Critique of Pure Reason" the most complicated book of World Literature. Kant the man has been caricatured as an anti-social celibate pedant who lived his life with mechanical accuracy. This much needed full length Biography of Immanuel Kant is well-researched, well-documented and well-written, and goes a long way to removing these erroneous assumptions.

Kuehn, Professor of Philosophy at Marburg, Germany, begins by outlining a history of Kant Biographies, starting with the three biographers who knew Kant personally, Borowski, Jachmann and Wasianski. He concludes with Stuckenberg (1882) and Vorländer (1924), the last true biographers of Kant, making an excellent case that a full length Biography was much needed. He is correct in the assessment that Kant's correspondence is one of the best, yet underutilized sources. His thesis is to prove how Kant's intellectual path is more closely connected with biographical details of his life as has been previously assumed, and how Kant's life was much more diverse and more full of human contact. In this Kuehn succeeds well.

In nine remarkably even Chapters, both in paginal and chronological length, Kant's Life and work are discussed together. This is very difficult to do, and requires someone who is knowledgable in Philosophy and whi is also a good writer, which Kuehn obviously is. He makes a series of excellent observations, documenting them amply with the 1,656 Footnotes. I will only mention a few here because of space limitations: Kuehn writes correctly that though Kant was much influenced by the values of his parents, his Philosophy was not influenced by Pietism. Also correct is the contention that Königsberg was by no means the out of the way provincial town it has been portrayed to be. On the contrary, Kant had much contact with persons of many cultural backgrounds and social standing, and the University of Königsberg was more advanced than other German Universities of the time. Of great interest are the descriptions of University life, of Kant's lecturing style, and his relationships with students. It seems that Kant was also gregarious and sought after in society. He was witty, well mannered and by all accounts an excellent conversationalist. He was not a recluse at all. Not having a house of his own until the age of fifty-nine, he ate in pubs for over thirty years. Of great interest is also the variety of friendships he had, with students, with the English Merchants Green and Motherby, and with the Novelist von Hippel, to name a few. Especially Kant's early life was far from methodical.

Interspresed with all of this biographical information are carefully written discussions of all of Kant's writings, and his philosophical development. By putting these into the context with Kant the man, they are much easier to understand. The discussion of the writing of the "Critique of Pure Reason" and the desciption of the book itself, its Philosophy, is the most readable and easiest to understand account I have ever read. Truly well done, as this can also serve as a useful introduction to Kant's Philosophy. The thesis here is that Kant's Critical Philosophy was not the result of a sudden inspiration, as has been pointed out elsewhere, but the result of many years of methodical work. Kuehn also correctly identifies some of Kant's misguided work, for example, "Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime".

The criticisms I have of this book are errors in quotations, for example of Kant's correspondence and citations from the Critique of Pure Reason and of the misuse of apostrophies in German. These seem to be proofreading errors. In addition, there are many excellent illustrations of Kant, his contemporaries and of Königsberg available (see Uwe Schultz "Immanuel Kant in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten"), thus the choice of the eleven mostly second rate illustrations by Cambridge University Press seems unfortunate. It would also have been most helpful to see fascimiles of Kant's handwriting which are fascinating to see. Finally, the Bibliography is one only of "Works Cited". It could have been more complete.

These criticisms aside, the Biography is very well done. It is surely accessible to persons not having a background in Philosophy. I believe that most readers will be pleasantly surprised that the life of Kant was not boring at all, especially in the way it is presented by Manfred Kuehn. I recommend this book very highly. Anyone wanting further biographical information on Kant is welcome to contact me.

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Kant Biography Available, June 9, 2001

By 

Norman Siefferman (Fredericksburg, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Kant: A Biography (Hardcover)

A student of Enlightenment philosophy for more than forty years, I have previously read three full biographies and numerous biographical essays on the great Koenigsberg professor; none came close to the quality and thoroughness of Kuehn's book. It is an important contribution to the history of the Enlightenment thought and western philosophy, and a just tribute to one of our great philosophers. As a bonus, it is beautifully written.

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The A Priori and the Toils of Finitude, August 27, 2001

By 

Robert S. Corrington (Madison, New Jersey United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kant: A Biography (Hardcover)

Even for those among us who have read and taught Kant, Manfred Kuehn's biography opens up a much richer portrayal of his many-sided genius and of his sensitivity to the external conditions of social and political life, not only in his native Konigsberg but in the global arena. At the same time, Kuehn carefully dissects many of the false views of Kant, especially around the issues of religion. We find that Kant not only firmly rejected the pietism from which he had (reluctantly) come, but that he was open to Freemasonry and something like a post-Christian universal religion. Ironically, the establishment of Freemasonry (which carried its own dogmatism concerning revelation) as a submerged perspective during the rule of his censor, King Willhelm II, caused him to withold some of his manuscripts until after the King's death in 1797. These manuscripts were published soon after. Kuehn gives a lively account of Kant's intense social life and of his flexibility during the Russian occupation of Konigsberg. This is fully consistent with Kant's anti-nationalism and healthy bias toward cosmopolitanism. Kuehn's discussions about Kant's sexuality are, however, a bit prissy and tend to give him credit for an asexual existence, even if he did fall in love more than once. He does succeed in at least putting pressure on the view that Kant was a mysogynist. Kuehn more or less dismisses any serious psychoanalytic reading of the motives behind Kant's drive for formal a priori constructions, thereby limiting his reach into Kant's real inner life. His exegesis of almost all of the writings is very traditional, although Kuehn takes great care to examine the false readings of Kant's contemporaries--seeing envy where it intervened in many of those readings. Since I came of age by reading Heidegger's daring probe into Kant's first "Critique," I find some of his readings a bit shop-worn. However, for the beginning student, and for all of us who can always use a good refresher course, his exegesis is solid and helpful. Kuehn's exegesis of Kant's moral theory is especially rich and insightful. Kuehn's very subtle analysis of Kant's political theories shows that Kant was quite liberal for his age and that he even provided room for a sexual pleasure principle outside of reproduction (but always within marriage of course). In particular, I was intrigued by his analysis of Kant's "Opus postumum," which some write off as a pastiche of a man way past his powers. Kuehn is open to the prospect that Kant was really trying to say something daring and new in this "work," even if it sounded more like Fichte than the Kant of the critiques (he makes one mistake when he attributes the English language edition to Eckart Forster and Stanley Rosen, rather than to Forster and Michael Rosen). In the "Opus" Kant uses a novel version of the subjectivity argument to posit an ether, known through our inner sense (a priori?) of motion as projected outward (a bit like Schopenhauer's argument for the priority of the Will). The ether is held to be the ground of all of the material things of the world, as well as of the self. Like the reviewer (above) from "Publishers Weekly" I find too many repetitions in the text as well as too much energy spent on describing bit players. However, my overall conclusion is that this is a labor of love that must be honored in intent and achievment. Manfred Kuehn has done something that no one else has done, namely, to bring more fully to life one of the great (almost pure) minds of the European trajectory in philosophy.