Immanuel kant biography book

John Dougherty. An enjoyable immanuel kant biography book through the very closed world of Prussian academia in the late 18th-century, and the Konigsberg-Berlin line of influence and political control over the professional careers of professors. This book does not involve itself into the exegesis of Kantian thought. This is its virtue and its vice.

It is a nice quiet read about who Kant got along with, what Fichte said or did, and minor details of debates, that read almost like NYROB disputes. In this sense the book is actually refreshing. It places Kant in a right place, not as some philosophical enigma, but as a working author. Clayton Brannon. Not just a biographer but a glimpse of his works.

Not the easiest book to read but one that is well worth the effort. If you were not a philosophy major in college you will find yourself googling the meaning of many words and if you are not up on German and Latin and some French you will need to translate short sentences to get the full importance of the words being used. I found it well worth the effort.

Kuhn criticizes other biographers of Kant of being dull while not escaping from this flaw himself. However, I'm glad I finished the book because Kant's deterioration near the end of his life throws into stark relief the question, "What is the point of living when once we've passed our abilities? Brings back the humanity stolen from one of the greatest minds the world has seen.

Explains how the anecdotes commonly known are to be doubted to conceive the individual; and yet hints in a surprisingly simple way, some of the most difficult pieces of human thought ever developed. Necessary read to bring the person closer to the student, and at the same time to admire his opus even more. This biography was so well done there is no need for another of Kant.

Kuhn really brought Kant to life and made one want to read his works and wish one could have attended one of his metaphysical lectures. One of the greatest minds to ever live, Kant should not be ignored. Kai Weber. A solid work of craft, carefully approaching what can currently be known about the worldly life of the philosopher from the extant sources and giving gentle introductions to the work, thereby drawing a picture of the development of Kant's thoughts.

Eine Biografie, die uns einen ganz anderen Kant zeigt. After like a year of reading I have finally finished. Amazing how a guy can never leave his town once 79 years and he could still change history forever. Es ist gut. Tim Mclaughlin. I'm not sure how to write this review, other than to give my overall impression of the book as a Kant-scholar and philosophy nerd.

I found Kuehn's biography of Kant both well written and remarkably interesting, and he does us a great service to help us to understand the man whose ideas have been so influential. Kant was a remarkable phenomenon. His father made just enough to get by, and because of their religious connections, young Kant was educated in Pietist schools.

He never married and all evidence suggests that he spent his entire life a virgin, though, it would seem, many women found him to be a handsome and eligible bachelor. Kuehn provides significant and rare insight into Kant's youth and pre-Critical career, focusing on his personal, professional, and intellectual relations, as well as his position within Prussian society.

I got a sense that Kuehn is attempting some sort of revisionism with this biography, though I think he successfully argues for why this is necessary. Kant rose to great fame when he was 57 when the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason was publishedand continued to publish philosophically influential works right into his 70s. He died just shy of Because of his "late bloom," earlier biographers offered anecdotes of Kant as his contemporaries knew him, which was, by then, as an eccentric, stubborn old man, a strong moralist, and at times a misogynist.

Kuehn attempts to revise this picture, depicting a side of Kant that is more human and emotionally complex. I noted that some things were missing. Cant sic is a Scottish name. This theory is thin enough not to grant much credibility, and trivial enough to be of little consequence; however, since so many scholars often claimed this in their brief biographical sketches of Kant, I would have expected Kuehn to have something to say about it.

Moreover, some of Kuehn's remarks seem largely based on speculation and little based on substantial evidence. For example, Kuehn portrays Kant as publicly a theist of sorts but privately an atheist. While much has been written about Kant's views of religion, which are heretical at best and hostile at worst, I don't think we can say so easily that he was personally an atheist as opposed to an agnostic or deist.

The fact that he was dismissive of religion he counted prayer as superstition and looked down on rituals and avoided the church does not indicate atheism. Overall I think this was a good read. If you're just into philosophy and not into history, however, I doubt you'll much enjoy it. Michael James. Author 13 books 11 followers. There is a genre of Biography called "Intellectual biography" and this work more than meets the criteria for such a classification.

It is no easy task to accurately in accordance with strict historical criteria narrate the life one of the Philosophical giants of History. Add to this task that of accurately rendering the philosophical ideas of one of the most difficult thinkers in history and one begins to appreciate the scope of the task Manfred Kuehn so successfully undertook.

Intellectual influences are carefully charted and insightfully estimated. The manifold of rational and empirical disputations are characterised and synthesised, recapturing Kant's journey in accordance with the motto of the Enlightenment "Sapere Audi! It immanuel kant biography book be disingenuous to criticise such a masterpiece but perhaps rendering more precise a debt that Kant must have owed to Aristotle would have made an excellent work move into the realm of the extraordinary.

My reading of this book was sustained primarily by the fact that it is about Kant. It's not a hard-going book, but it is not a compelling narrative either. Kant is surely now a more robust character in my mind than he was prior to reading Kuehn's biography, but he remains nonetheless a person of whom I have only shadowy knowledge. Although Kuehn makes intermittent attempts to reveal Kant the human being, the book is more like viewing Kant at a distance through smoked glass.

This might be a consequence of the dirth of primary sources, but I am dubious about that because Kuehn seems to actively avoid posing interesting conjectures about Kant's life. While this probably makes for safe scholarship it is ultimately pretty boring. Zorlu ve yorucu bir okuma oldu. Nicholas Lustins. Kuehn covers a lot of biographical information about Kant that paints a picture of a man as contradictory as most real people are.

Inhe became a full professor at the University of Konigsberg, teaching metaphysics and logic. InImmanuel Kant published the Critique of Pure Reasonan enormous work and one of the most important on Western thought. He attempted to explain how reason and experiences interact with thought and understanding. Kant focused on ethics, the philosophical study of moral actions.

What is right is right and what is wrong is wrong; there is no grey area. Human beings are obligated to follow this imperative unconditionally if they are to claim to be moral. Though the Critique of Pure Reason received little attention at the time, Kant continued to refine his theories in a series of essays that comprised the Critique of Practical Reason and Critique of Judgement.

Kant continued to write on philosophy until shortly before his death.

Immanuel kant biography book

In his last years, he became embittered due to his loss of memory. He died in at age We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Marcus Garvey. Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Better World Books. Uploaded by station Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon.

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