Kant: A Biography

By Manfred Kuehn and Manfred Kühn

Book Overview

This is the first full-length biography in more than fifty years of Immanuel Kant, one of the giants amongst the pantheon of Western philosophers as well as the one with the most powerful and broad influence on contemporary philosophy. It is well known that Kant spent his entire life in an isolated part of Prussia living the life of a typical university professor. This has given rise to the view that Kant was a pure thinker with no life of his own, or at least none worth considering seriously. In this biography, Manfred Kuehn debunks that myth once and for all. Taking account of the most recent scholarship Professor Kuehn allows the reader (whether interested in philosophy, history, politics, German culture, or religion) to follow the same journey that Kant himself took in emerging as a central figure in modern philosophy.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521497043
• ISBN13: 9780521497046
• Release Date: March 2001
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 576 Pages
• Weight: 2.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Explore the life of a Prussian Genius

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.

A clear view on one of the greatest masters

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.

An Excellent Biography

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).

The Best Kant Biography Available

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.

The definitive Kant Biography

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