A gathering and evaluation of some important data—but it's not for the casual reader.
For the dedicated and persistent, this “first full-length biography of . . . philosopher Immanuel Kant in over 50 years,” attempts to humanize the man long pictured as having no life outside the mind.
Kuehn (Philosophy/Phillips Univ.) mines the relatively sparse and sometimes untrustworthy biographical material as best he can. We learn that Kant was a whiz at billiards as a young man (earning some of his living expenses at the table), that he was welcomed into the salons of high society in his hometown of Königsberg both for his learning and his conversational ability, that he was a bit of a clothes horse, and in other ways a social animal, enjoying the company of his friends, dining, and discoursing in restaurants and pubs for many hours a day. However gregarious Kant may have been, it is inescapable that it was his cerebral and not his gustatory adventures that made him the celebrated figure that he remains. So the biographical details are matched, if not overwhelmed, by discussions of the intellectual, religious, and political influences that surrounded Kant as he lived out his long life in Königsberg. These included the Pietistic beliefs of his parents as well as the rich and provocative writings of Enlightenment figures such as Rousseau and David Hume, but also German scientists, theologians, and thinkers (many of whom had been Kant’s students). As he rose from lowly lecturer to senior professor at the University of Königsberg, Kant honed his ideas about the opposition of reason to sense, ruminating through what Kuehn calls “The Silent Years” and finally beginning to publish extensively only in his late 50s. There are lengthy excerpts from arguments made for and against Kant’s ideas by friends and rivals during this productive period. Finally, Kant began a long mental and physical deterioration leading to his death two days before his 80th birthday.
A gathering and evaluation of some important data—but it's not for the casual reader.Pub Date: April 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-521-49704-3
Page Count: 530
Publisher: Cambridge Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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