Customer Reviews

Kant: A Biography

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Superb, biography !!! In which the writer seems to heading for a definitive biography on one of the greatest masters that ever touched a Philosophical matter. Kant has earned the reputation as a very complicated thinker. I have read a few of his works and I can do nothing else than agree in this.

After I read this book I really seemed to understand his philosophy much beter. I feel I have a good idea about what were his major concerns and what was it that he tried to solve and prove. I have a good idea now about what the Critique Of Pure Reason is, such as other works as the other 2 Critiques & Groundworks.

If you want to read the works of Kant himself, make sure you pick this one up first and learn it by heart. Its as best as any introduction can get on his work, A truly homage to a great master.

There are besides that plenty of details about his personal life. His love for Frederik The Great, plenty of stuff from his students, how they thought about him, and what kept him occupied in his free hours. And there we get a very different Kant than the one that went into history for so far.

This is the first new biography of Kant in many years, and there seem to have been good reasons for that. One, which Kuehn tactfully does not discuss, is the postwar political situation of Kant's hometown. Another, he admits, is that there is a stereotype of Kant as having lived a dull, boring life; and further, he also admits, there were earlier and quite successful attempts to cover up aspects of Kant's life that earlier biographers found distasteful. And the trouble with this biography is that in spite of all the author's efforts, these earlier assessments really turn out to be quite correct. Kant really did lead an extremely meager, restricted, spartan life even by the standards of that time and place, and this was by his own choice. Starting as a young child, his life was devoted to study, first as a student and then without a break, as a professor. His only recreation consisted in conversing and eating with friends. Koenigsburg did offer other opportunities. As Kuehn correctly points out, it was then a busy commercial city, on a popular trade route along the Baltic, and at the time a strong English connection. In addition, it was the administrative capital of eastern Prussia, second only as a government center to Berlin, and with a busy social season. It was especially noted for its musical culture - but Kant couldn't play an instrument, sing, or even enjoy listening. He couldn't dance. He wasn't interested in sports or nature. He walked daily, but only for exercise, in the same place and at the same time - in fact, the "Philosopher's Walk" remained a tourist attraction well into this century. He didn't go to church, and his near-atheism almost cost him his job. He didn't belong to the then popular Freemasons or any similar group. He lived most of his life in rented rooms, and when he did buy a house, barely kept it up (unlike his fussy bachelor friends); he didn't garden or own a pet. He seems, in fact as in stereotype, to have been nothing but a talking head.

Kuehn avoids psychoanalytic jargon, and for once this is regrettable, as it would be appropriate here. Kant was clearly an obsessive-compulsive, whose life was lived by constantly making up maxims, or rules, for himself, and which he then turned into a philosophical system. He did eat with friends, but he both amused and disgusted them by obsessing about his food, his digestion, and the - er - end products. (Freud definitely had a word for that.) Better known is his obsession about time, which Kuehn traces to his English friend Green - but it took the German philosopher to turn the personal eccentricity of the English merchant into a universal maxim. He really did get up at 5 a.m. and teach his first class at 7, during the winter prior to dawn, and the neighbors really did joke about setting their clocks by him.

He had a pathological fear of travel, and never went more than about 100 miles from Koenigsburg, although his investments in Green's firm would have allowed him to travel with the maximum style and comfort then obtainable. Not only did he never voyage by ship, but he never visited Berlin; when the Prussian government offered to triple his salary if he would switch to a larger and more central university, he refused. This had some odd effects - he taught physical geography, although he had never seen a mountain, and anthropology, although his acquaintance with non-white humans may have been equally lacking. This did not stop him from firmly stating as a scientific fact that non-whites were of different and inferior biological races.

Nor was travel all he was afraid of; to quote Kuehn, page 116, "Kant, who never married, and who-as far as we know-never had sex,..." - which did not stop him from stating that all sexual activity aside from marital procreation was morally unacceptable. Kuehn does hint once or twice that he may actually have been homosexual, but draws back before ever quite using the word.

Does it matter? Arthur Koestler once wrote that if Descartes had kept a poodle, it would have saved the human race a great deal of suffering. In the same vein, one can only think that if Kant had ever spent a vacation in Paris, it would have greatly improved both his life and his philosophy. Certainly anyone studying Kant after reading this book will have to ask rather dubiously which parts of his system really have an abstract value and which are merely rationalizations of his own neuroses.

Should you buy this book? If you are interested in - or assigned to study - Kant, philosophy, or German cultural history - the answer is yes. The more casual reader who just wants a good biography should be warned, however, that Kuehn assumes a considerable amount of background knowledge, and that it might be preferable to start with a more elementary summary.

I found this book engaging. It was recommended to me by a former philosophy professor. For anyone looking for a solid, accesible introduction to the life and mind of a great thinker, this is the place to start. Kuehn delves into Kant's family background, the society, his ideas, his relationships with women and the Prussian upper-classes. We learn about Kant's health, his weak digestion and the strained relationships he had with his siblings. He lived a quiet life but Kuehn illustrates how rich and human his daily life truly was.

Of all the biographies I have read over the past few years, this remains my favourite and the most memorable. Ideal for those interested in philosophy or the social history of Prussia in the 18th century.

This may sound awkward, but reading this book has made me felt that even though I wasn't born around the time Kant was alive, at least I am fortunate in living in the 21st century when the best of Kant's Biography finally emerged from a dedicated professor Kuehn. What makes me say is that as the previous reviewer said, there hasn't been a satisfying biography on Kant, and many have been fairly brief. It is until 2002 when a more detailed examination of Kant's life has finally been published for anyone, including those who admire Kant's works. What amazed me is that fact is much more livelier and enriching than fiction; Contrary to the myth that Kant is a stoic-like German professor with an asberger/autistic-like personality who sticks to a dry and boring routine everyday, living in a isolated town of Konisberg, Kant is actually a very gregarious man who loves to eat at the pub with his friends; koninsberg is not an isolated town but a cosmopolitan city where people from diverse backgrounds co-exist. Kuehn also mentioned that Kant was not only a reputable professor in Germany, but also a popular professor among his students in his early professional career. Kant was a lively lecturer in Anthropology and Geology, but a difficult professor in Metaphysics and Logic. Contrary to the popular assumption that Kant is continually influenced by lutheran pietism, Kant has actually rejected pietism because of its fanaticism, superstition, and ludicrous doctrine of atonement (e.g. He criticized pietism's contradictory dictum that one should repent for not being repentant). He also had many friends from different backgrounds, but the closest to him has been merchants, lawyers, scientists, poets, and especially philosophers. Famous philosophers such as Mendelssohn had an important relationship with Kant. Surprisingly, Kant was actually quite liberal for his time. One example of this is his adherent opposition to antisemitism because of his positive personal experience with intelligent and gifted Jewish students and philosophers.

Overall the depiction of Kant's personality is very much clear in this biography, and anyone who is curious about Kant's life should definitely read this book.

Kuehn begins his comprehensive and engaging volume, adjectives not generally associated with Kant studies, with a clever Dickensian inversion: "The year 1724 was not one of the most significant years in the history of the human race, but it was not wholly insignificant either." He goes on to offer a most compelling look at the life and thought of one of the modern era's most important contributors respectfully, yet without a trace of the schmoozing so tempting in Kant scholarship. A look not only at the minutae of a man's private life, but also a convincing examination of many well-worn historical interpretations, sometimes lending credence, often challenging some of our most basic assumptions about the influences at play for Kant and his broader philosophical project.

Kuehn has taken on a handful with this project, yet the outcome is superb. This is a careful and scholarly text. Contrary to what one of the reviewers commented here, I think the book was an interesting and entertaining read. I highly recommend this biography to anyone with even the slightest interest in Kant (or his contribution to Enlightenment Philosophy). And it would make a great text for an Introduction to Kant course (just as Monk's bio on Wittgenstein is often used in intro courses).

We sometimes think of Kant as having lived a boring and dull life--that he was in fact as mundane and interesting a person as the schedule he kept (shop owners in the marketplace would often set their clocks to his daily walks). But the picture of Kant that Kuehn provides us with here is radically different. Sure, Kant lead a regular and ordered life, but Kuehn breathes accurate life into pedestrian images of Kant that we may have learned in school (or in textbooks).

World history shows a crisis of the philosophical. In the wreckage of metaphpysical systems and the crash landing into modernism of the great religions, the rise of science in turn encounters a new dilemma in the one-dimensional flatland of empiricism. The visions of a ghostseer become a desert of empty reductionism, the world of the modern bedouin. At a critical turning point in history, we see the philosopher Kant attempting to discover the middle way between these extremes. This fine biography covers the full ground of Kant's adventure into the unknown, from the earliest period of his Pietist background to the close of his system at the time of the French Revolution. And a remarkable life it is, stretching the bow between the most ordinary existence and the most extraordinary flowering of the philosopher, as if his life were itself an 'idea for a universal history', for it becomes an echo and recursion of the whole endeavor of thought's evolution, even as it mutates into a new future. The mysterious stages of Kant's development, and his late yield of maturity are a riddle of contemplation in action, as we see an age passing in many thunders beside this quiet yet more fundamental revolution after which no philosophical endeavor will be the same. Indeed, even our most newly sanctified theories of evolution will soon reckon with this double whammy that haunts the rationalist metaphysician and the empiricist, for such theories contain purloined the hidden version of the dialectic of illusion that will reduce even such to rubble if they cannot find the real man of practical reason and ethical self-consciousness.