Manfred Kuehn. Kant: A Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
From the time that I was an undergraduate until now, the eighteenth
century philosopher Immanuel Kant has been with me. I’ve heard or read
such things as: “Kant refuted the arguments for the existence of God.”
“Kant offered a moral argument for the existence of God.” “Kant did not
believe time and space are real.” “Kant did not believe in cause and
effect.” “Your defense of our ability to know the outside world and
talk about it objectively can be knocked down by a neo-Kantian!” “Kant
was not an epistemological skeptic but was trying to refute Humean
skepticism.” “We don’t need God to have morality, for Kant offered his
own basis for morality: you refrain from doing what you don’t want
everyone else to do.” “Kant was absolutist when it came to ethics.”
“Kant said you should stick with moral principles out of duty,
regardless of what you feel.” “Kant said Abraham should have disobeyed
God when God told him to sacrifice his son.” “Our universe is an
orderly machine, as Kant said.” “Kant was so orderly that people set
their clocks according to his daily walks.” “That guy is not
sophisticated enough to understand Kant.” “You don’t understand Kant.”
“It’s pronounced ‘KOnt,’ not ‘KAnt!’” “I have a philosophy joke: Who
was the greatest philosopher? I Kant remember! Ha ha.”
I wondered what exactly Kant believed, for so many things that I read
and heard about him seemed contradictory. I have been particularly
curious about Kant’s epistemology—-his view about whether or not we are
able to understand the outside world and to talk about it
accurately—-and also Kant’s stance regarding religion. Perhaps I could
have read his works on reason: I picked up a book that contained some of
Kant’s prominent works at a library giveaway a while back. But many
will agree with me that Kant is not easy to read (though I do remember
translating a sample from one of his books about reason for a German
class, and I did not find the passage particularly difficult to
translate). I thought that, if I read a biography about Kant, maybe I
would get to know him better, and the biography would effectively
communicate what his philosophy was, within Kant’s historical context. I
went to a library and saw that shelf after shelf was devoted to Kant:
there were more books about Kant in that library than there were about
David Hume! I thumbed through various books. Many of the ones that I
looked at had thick prose. Manfred Kuehn’s Kant: A Biography
attracted me, however, for its prose appeared lucid, accessible, and
engaging. The few pages that I looked at while I was perusing it read
like other biographies I have read and enjoyed, ones about Nixon and
Reagan. I decided to check the book out. “Maybe now I will finally
understand Kant!,” I thought.
Do I now understand Kant, after having read Kuehn’s book? Well, I
think that I know Kant better as a person. As far as Kant’s philosophy
is concerned, I’m still hazy, and I figure that I need to read more
books to get more of a sense of where Kant was coming from.
Kuehn disagrees with many other biographies of Kant. There are
biographies of Kant that depict him as extremely introverted,
unsociable, unwilling to engage other scholars in discussion,
misogynistic, cold, orderly, stingy, and shut off from the wider world.
Kuehn attempts to account for these portrayals, as he offers evidence
that Kant was sociable and engaged other scholars. While Kant never
married and maybe never even had sex, he had female friends, and he did
not marry because he never found the right time. Kant could also be
generous, according to Kuehn. While I would probably identify with Kant
more had he been introverted and unsociable—-he would then be another
inspiring example to an Aspergian like me—-I could relate to Kant’s
struggles to find a foothold within academia, with all of its rivalries
and judgments.
Regarding philosophy, Kuehn’s book is useful for those who would like
summaries of the various stages of Kant’s thought and works. I am
still hazy about Kant’s thought, however, for a variety of reasons. For
one, Kant changed his mind about things. Earlier, for example, Kant
radically distinguished between what we know empirically and what we
know rationally (a priori, prior to experience). Later on, he appeared
to conflate the two. Second, the way people understood and
characterized what Kant was saying was not necessarily how he himself
understood what he was saying. Kant was accused of being an atheist and
a dangerous epistemological skeptic, when Kant viewed his project
differently. Third, Kant seemed to me to be all over the map in what he
said. On some things, he seemed to me to contradict himself, and yet
there were times when he could hold those apparently contradictory
concepts together with some nuance. I think specifically of his support for the American and French
revolutions, even though he wrote against the idea that people can
revolt against their government. Fourth, Kant did not always believe
in what he wrote. While, in his writings, he was rather open to the
existence of God and immortality, he personally was very skeptical about
these things, according to Kuehn. My impression is that Kant was interested in religion in terms of its
social consequences: its promotion of morality and social well-being.
I think that Kuehn could have explained better what was at stake in
many of the philosophical discussions of the day. Kuehn is effective
when he describes the interaction between Kant and other philosophers
and the political systems of that time. But I often felt that I was
reading about philosophical discussions and did not fully understand the
significance of what I was reading. In my opinion, Kuehn would have
done well to have included a glossary of philosophical terms, such as
pre-established harmony and idealism. Pre-established harmony comes up
often in Kuehn’s book. Kant had a pietist evangelical background, which
he did not exactly hate or scorn, and the pietists loathed a prominent
philosopher named Christian Wolff because Wolff believed in
pre-established harmony, which they took to imply fatalism. Kant
appeared to be open to pre-established harmony, however. I am not
entirely sure what pre-established harmony was, or why the pietists
hated that concept so much. It is associated with Leibniz, who held
that our world is the best possible world, so maybe that is relevant to
pre-established harmony. Regarding idealism, my hazy impressions are
that it either maintained that all of the world is in the mind of God,
or that it is in human minds, but I should do more reading about that.
According to Kuehn, Kant was accused of being an idealist, but Kant
believed that he was refuting idealism!
I had moments of lucidity in reading Kuehn’s discussion about Kant’s
philosophy. According to Kuehn, Kant said that we know things by how
they appear to us, not according to how they actually are. That makes a
degree of sense to me! Kant also discussed contradictions within
reason. Kant may not have taken these insights into the realm of
complete epistemological skepticism: perhaps Kant was critical in his analysis of reason, not thoroughly skeptical.
There were some aspects of Kant’s thought that I found interesting.
For instance, Kant was critical of looking for a Golden Age (perhaps a
supernatural one), for he believed that the evil in this world was
somehow necessary in our progress and maturation.
Overall, I could identify with what one thinker quoted in the book
said about Kant’s works: it takes thirty years to understand them, and
then one has to wait another thirty years before one is qualified to
comment on them!
As I said, I will need to read more. The next book that I will read is the Cambridge Companion to David Hume, and it looks very lucid to me. The Cambridge Companion series advertises itself as such—-as accessible books that break down complex thoughts for readers. I notice that there are Cambridge Companion
books about the German Idealists, Kant, and the influence of Kant’s
thought. I may read those books in the future—-not immediately, but in
the future.