Manfred Kuehn Kant: A Biography. (Book notes).(Brief Article)

Manfred Kuehn Kant: A Biography. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Pp. xxii+544. [pound sterling]30.00 (Hbk). ISBN 0 521 49704 3.

This delightful and engaging book is the first full-length biography on Kant for more than fifty years. It is well known that Kant spent his entire life in an isolated part of Prussia, living the life of an officious and punctilious university professor. These bare facts have given rise to the view that Kant was a pure philosopher, lost to abstract thought, with no real life of his own. In a gripping narrative that is attentive to both philosophical ideas and historical context, Kuehn debunks this myth once and for all. The …