Kant Immanuel - Immanuel Kant: a biography

KANT

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 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. Manfred Kuehn debunks that myth once and for all.

Kants life (17241804) spanned almost the entire eighteenth century, and the period of his adulthood coincided with some of the most significant changes in the Western world, many of which still reverberate in our lives today. This was the period in which the modern view of the world originated, and this biography reveals how Kants philosophy was an expression of and response to this new conception of modernity. His intellectual life reflects the most significant intellectual, political, and scientific developments of the period, from the literary movement of Sturm und Drang to such distant events as the French and American Revolutions.

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: from being a scholar narrowly focusing on the metaphysical foundations of Newtonian science to emerging as a great thinker expounding the defense of the morality of an enlightened citizen of the world.

Manfred Kuehn was a professor of philosophy at Purdue University from 1983 to 1999. He is now teaching at the Philipps-Universitt Marburg.

Kant

A Biography

Manfred Kuehn

Philipps-Universitt Marburg

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

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Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521497046

Cambridge University Press 2001

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2001

First paperback edition 2002

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-0-521-49704-6 hardback

ISBN 978-0-521-52406-3 paperback

Transferred to digital printing 2009

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To

Margret

Contents

Acknowledgments

THE FOUNDING of the North American Kant Society in 1986 was a significant event not only for Kant scholarship in the United States but also for me personally. I have been lucky to be able to serve as the societys bibliographer since its inception, and I am glad to observe that Kant scholarship has become a more cooperative enterprise since that time. Indeed, I have benefited greatly from the help of many friends and colleagues whom I might never have known without this institution. I cannot thank all of those who have had an influence on my work over the years, but I would like to give a special thanks to the late Lewis White Beck, who was the founding father of the society. Like many, I owe him a great debt. I am sure this book would have been greatly improved if it could have benefited from his advice, but unfortunately that was not to be.

I have, however, been fortunate to benefit from the help and advice of many others. I am very grateful to Terry Moore, who first encouraged me to think about the necessity for a new biography of Kant, and then suggested that I write it. Without him, this book would never have been written. It would have remained a dream. In writing the book, I have incurred many other debts. First among those are the ones to my friends in Marburg, who helped me greatly not only in the research, but also in the preparation of the first draft. Heiner Klemmes encouragement, help, and friendship were decisive from beginning to end. I cannot thank him enough. Werner Starks expert advice improved the work a great deal and saved me from a number of serious errors. Werner Euler generously shared some of his unpublished work with me. Reinhard Brandt, who rightfully pointed out to me early on that any biography of Kant could be written only in Marburg, was also helpful in a number of ways. His comments on the penultimate version were especially important.

I am also grateful to the staffs of the University Library and the Library of the Institute of Philosophy at the Philipps-Universitt Marburg, and of the Herder Institute in Marburg. I spent many enjoyable hours there in the summers of 1995 and 1997, as well as a few days in 1996 and 1998. Some of the preparatory work was done with the support of a summer grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in the summer of 1988 and a fellowship at the Center for Humanistic Studies at Purdue University during the fall of 1990. This support was originally for a study of Kants philosophical development, parts of which have been incorporated into this book. Much of the first draft was written with the support of another fellowship at the Center for Humanistic Studies during the fall of 1995. I am also thankful to Rod Bertolet, the chair of the department of philosophy at Purdue University, who made various arrangements that made it possible for me to return to Marburg in 1997.

Some of my other colleagues at Purdue, namely Cal Schrag, William McBride, and Jacqueline Marina, graciously commented on an early draft of the first three chapters, and the comments and suggestions of Mary Norton and Rolf George significantly improved the final version of those chapters. Martin Curd read various parts and left his mark on them (I have indicated some in the text).

Karl Ameriks, Michael Gill, Steve Naragon, Konstantin Pollok, and Frederick Rauscher read the entire manuscript and made many helpful comments for which I am most grateful. Karl Ameriks and Michael Gill, especially, took such an active interest in the project that their influence is everywhere. I wish that the final product could more adequately express what I have learned from them.

Finally, I would like to thank Margret Kuehn for her support during the writing of this book and my other quixotic travails.

Cast of Characters

Borowski, Ludwig Ernst (17401832), one of Kants first students; he remained friendly with Kant throughout his life. During his later years, Borowski was a high official in the Lutheran Church of Prussia. He was a frequent dinner guest during Kants last years. He wrote one of the three official biographies of Kant, but did not attend his funeral.

Baczko, Adolph Franz Joseph von (17561823), a student of Kants during the seventies (and a friend of Kraus). Although he lost his eyesight, he was a capable historian. A professorship at the University of Knigsberg was denied him because he was a Catholic.