Throughout his life, German philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) recorded his experiences and reflections in diaries and correspondence. This comprehensive biography is the first to explore these extensive and candid private writings that illuminate not only Jaspers’ life and relationships but also the ideas he proposed in Way to Wisdom, The Question of German Guilt, and many other published works. Suzanne Kirkbright provides a sensitive and intimate portrait of the philosopher whose work on truth, personal integrity, and the capacity for (...) communication contrasted acutely with the erosion of such values in Germany in his lifetime. She describes how Jaspers’ Jewish wife, Gertrud, influenced his thinking, the loss in 1937 of his professorship at Heidelberg University, and his relationship with such celebrated colleagues as Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt. Kirkbright examines the unshakeable ethical content of Jaspers’ philosophy and demonstrates his unique and scrupulous personal adherence to the philosophical principles he espoused. (shrink)

While historiography is dominated by attempts that try to standardize and de-individualize the behavior of animals, history proves to be littered with records of the exceptional lives of unusual animals. This book introduces animal biography as an approach to the re-framing of animals as both objects of knowledge as well as subjects of individual lives. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective and bringing together scholars from, among others, literary, historical and cultural studies, the texts collected in this volume seek to refine (...) animal biography as a research method and framework to studying, capturing, representing and acknowledging animal others as individuals. From Heini Hediger's biting monitor, Hachikō and Murr to celluloid ape Caesar and the mourning of Topsy's gruesome death, the authors discuss how animal biographies are discovered and explored through connections with humans that can be traced in archives, ethological fieldwork and novels, and probe the means of constructing animal biographies from taxidermy to film, literature and social media. Thus, they invite deeper conversations with socio-political and cultural contexts that allow animal biographies to provide narratives that reach beyond individual life stories, while experimenting with particular forms of animal biographies that might trigger animal activism and concerns for animal well-being, spur historical interest and enrich the literary imagination. (shrink)

Why does an object or phenomenon become the subject of scientific inquiry? Why do some of these objects remain provocative, while others fade from center stage? And why do objects sometimes return as the focus of research long after they were once abandoned? Addressing such questions, _Biographies of Scientific Objects_ is about how whole domains of phenomena—dreams, atoms, monsters, culture, society, mortality, centers of gravity, value, cytoplasmic particles, the self, tuberculosis—come into being and sometimes pass away as objects of scientific (...) study. With examples drawn from both the natural and social sciences, and ranging from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, this book explores the ways in which scientific objects are both real and historical. Whether discovered or invented, these objects of inquiry broaden and deepen in meaning—growing more "real"—as they become entangled in webs of cultural significance, material practices, and theoretical derivations. Thus their biographies will matter to anyone concerned with the formation of scientific knowledge. Contributors are Jed Z. Buchwald, Lorraine Daston, Rivka Feldhay, Jan Goldstein, Gerard Jorland, Doris Kauffman, Bruno Latour, Theodore M. Porter, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Marshall Sahlins, and Peter Wagner. (shrink)

One of the founders of modern philosophical thought Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel has gained the reputation of being one of the most abstruse and impenetrable of thinkers. This major biography of Hegel offers not only a complete account of the life, but also a perspicuous overview of the key philosophical concepts in Hegel's work in a style that will be accessible to professionals and non-professionals alike. Terry Pinkard situates Hegel firmly in the historical context of his times. The story (...) of that life is of an ambitious, powerful thinker living in a period of great tumult dominated by the figure of Napoleon. The Hegel who emerges from this account is a complex, fascinating figure of European modernity, who offers us a still compelling examination of that new world born out of the political, industrial, social, and scientific revolutions of his period. (shrink)

This accessible and highly readable book is the first full-length biography of Hegel to be published since the largely outdated treatments of the nineteenth century. Althaus draws on new historical material and scholarly sources about the life and times of this most enigmatic and influential of modern philosophers. He paints a living portrait of a thinker whose personality was more complex than is often imagined, and shows that Hegel's relation to his revolutionary times was also more ambiguous than is (...) usually accepted. Althaus presents a broad chronological narrative of Hegel's development from his early theological studies in Tubingen and the associated unpublished writings, profoundly critical of the established religious orthodoxies. He traces Hegel's years of philosophical apprenticeship with Schelling in Jena as he struggled for an independent intellectual position, up to the crowning period of influence and success in Berlin where Hegel appeared as the advocate of the modern Prussian state. Althaus tells a vivid story of Hegel's life and his intellectual and personal crises, drawing generously on the philosopher's own words from his extensive correspondence. His central role in the cultural and political life of the time is illuminated by the impressions and responses of his contemporaries, such as Schelling, Schleiermacher and Goethe. This panoramic introduction to Hegel's life, work and times will be a valuable resource for scholars, students and anyone interested in this towering figure of philosophy. (shrink)

Cet article a pour objet le rapport éventuel entre la biographie épicurienne, dans sa fonction de proposer des modèles de félicité humaine, et la biographie telle qu’elle est pratiquée dans le platonisme de l’Antiquité tardive, notamment dans le De vita Pythagorica de Jamblique. Il est montré que des traits du portrait de Pythagore, tel que Jamblique le représente, le mode de vie qu’il cultivait et qu’il enseignait à ses disciples, évoquent des éléments spécifiques à l’éthique d’Épicure. La manière dont la (...) biographie avait été pratiquée dans les écoles épicuriennes, servant à proposer des exemples de la vie du sage, à imiter et assimiler par les membres de l’école, fait l’objet d’une deuxième section. Enfin, plus généralement, il est noté que l’éthique épicurienne a pu trouver place dans la philosophie néoplatonicienne, chez Porphyre et chez Jamblique, au niveau de la vie pratique, de la discipline du corps et des désirs corporels. (shrink)

Biography is one of the most popular categories of books—and indeed the most popular category among nonfiction books, according to one British poll. Thus, biography offers historians of science an opportunity to reach a potentially broad audience. This essay examines approaches typical of different genres of scientific biography, including historians’ motivations in their choices of biographical subject and their decisions about strategies for reconstruction of the biographical life. While historians of science often use biography as a (...) vehicle to analyze scientific processes and scientific culture, the most compelling scientific biographies are ones that portray the ambitions, passions, disappointments, and moral choices that characterize a scientist’s life. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Critical Theory's Attack on Biography The Attack from within Literary Criticism Distinguishing a Category of Relevant Biographical Information Biographical Information as an Aid to Understanding Biographical Information as an Aid to Appreciation Biographical Information as an Integral Part of Appreciation Conclusion.

This collection of essays deals with the relationship between Wittgenstein's life and his philosophy. The first two essays reflect on general problems inherent in philosophical biography itself. The essays that follow draw on recently published letters as well as recently published diaries from the 1930s to explore Wittgenstein's background as an engineer and its relation to the Tractatus, the impact of his schizoid personality on his approach to philosophy, his role as a diarist, letter-writer and polemicist, and finally the (...) complex issue of Wittgenstein as a Jew. Written by a first-rate team of Wittgenstein scholars including two published biographers of the philosopher, Brian McGuinness and Ray Monk, this collection will appeal to anyone with a serious interest in the most influential philosopher of the twentieth century. (shrink)

This is the first full-length biography in more than fifty years of Immanuel Kant, one of the giants amongst 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. In this biography, Manfred Kuehn debunks that myth once and for all. 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 in emerging as a central figure in modern philosophy. (shrink)

By way of essays and a selection of primary sources in parallel text, Biography, Historiography, and Modes of Philosophizing provides an introduction to a vast, significant, but neglected corpus of early modern literature: collective biography. It focuses especially on the various related strands of political, philosophical, and intellectual and cultural biography as well as on the intersection between biography, historiography, and philosophy. Individual texts from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century are presented as examples of how (...) the ancient collective biographical tradition--as represented above all by Plutarch, Suetonius, Diogenes Laertius, and Jerome--was received and transformed in the Renaissance and beyond in accordance with the needs of humanism, religious controversy, politics, and the development of modern philosophy and science"--Provided by publisehr. (shrink)

This article offers a comparative study of seven German biographies of Karl Marx (1818–1883) that were published between the two world wars. The interpretations of Marx’s theory of historical materialism presented in these biographies fall into three groups or approaches: the orthodox, the neo-Kantian, and the psychological. Some biographies place Marx the revolutionary above Marx the theorist, while others reverse this order. Similarly, some of the biographies explain the relationship between Marx’s life and thought by adopting the “experience–psychology–thought” framework. The (...) orthodox approach emphasizes the objectivity of cognition in the base–superstructure relationship. Yet both the orthodox and the neo-Kantian approach, which stresses Kant’s cognitive critique and the “is–ought” dualism, fail to grasp Marx’s subject–object dialectics, while the psychological approach undermines the theoretical significance of historical materialism. In comparing and assessing these works I argue that the biographers’ historical and scholarly horizons are dictated by their political standpoint and academic perspective and thus determine their choice of approach, which not only indicates if they will lean toward the theoretical or the revolutionary Marx, but also why they fail to adequately deal with the relationship between Marx’s life and his thought. Nevertheless, I conclude that these biographies, despite their various shortcomings, establish the basic paradigm and parameters of any biography of Marx. (shrink)

Biography is a story, and a story is something that is meant to be told. It is thus quite evident that biography is the tale of a life: a life-story (Lebensgeschichte in German). But then the question arises as to what exactly is a story and how apt is it for representing life within the limits of this representation as compared to other representations of life: the painted or written portrait, the private diary, the oral or tape-recorded interview, (...) the curriculum vitae, the anthropometric file or the epitaph, which at least has the merit of being concise. (shrink)

In the last years, a series of automated self-representational social media sites have emerged that shed light on the information ethics associated with participation in Web 2.0. Sites like Zoominfo.com, Pipl.com, 123People.com and Yasni.com not only continually mine and aggregate personal information and biographic data from the web and beyond to automatically represent the lives of people, but they also engage algorithmic networking logics to represent connections between them; capturing not only who people are, but whom they are connected to. (...) Indeed, these processes of 'auto-biography' are 'secret' ones that for the most part escape the user's attention. This article explores how these sites of auto-biography reveal the complexities of the political economy of Web 2.0, as well as implicate an ethics of exposure concerning how these processes at once participate in the erosion of privacy, and at the same time, in the reinforcement of commodification and surveillance regimes. (shrink)

This collection of essays deals with the relationship between Wittgenstein's life and his philosophy. The first two essays reflect on general problems inherent in philosophical biography itself. The essays that follow draw on recently published letters as well as recently published diaries from the 1930s to explore Wittgenstein's background as an engineer and its relation to the Tractatus, the impact of his schizoid personality on his approach to philosophy, his role as a diarist, letter-writer and polemicist, and finally the (...) complex issue of Wittgenstein as a Jew. Written by a first-rate team of Wittgenstein scholars including two published biographers of the philosopher, Brian McGuinness and Ray Monk, this collection will appeal to anyone with a serious interest in the most influential philosopher of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Short biographies of twenty world famous philosophers.

From the 1990s onwards there has been growing interest in the study of biography. As opposed to those who are skeptical of the biographical method, we defend the historiographical importance of collective biographies by contrasting them with biographical collections. By discussing the historical background of biography as a branch of history, and by focusing on the aims, methodology and outcomes of collective biographies, we attempt to show how they both extend and deepen our concept of historical research.

1. Bd. Kindheit. Jugend. Die Basler Jahre -- 2. Bd. Die zehn Jahre des freien Philosophen -- 3. Bd. Die Jahre des Siechtums. Dokumente. Quellen und Register.

We are again going through a period of expansion in biographical literature. There is an ever greater number of publications, demonstrating the libido biographica of the reading public and also showing the interest of authors for a genre that is often treated with a great deal of care and rigor. This is not the first time in the history of letters, and each of us can find in his library a quantity of ancient, classic or modern works proving the constancy (...) of this production. However, the contemporary phenomenon takes on a different meaning. The appetite for the biographical seems to be directly linked to its value as testimony. We are living in an era of distrust with regard to rules and codes. Every individual is called on to organize his conduct and invent his existence, from which comes, it seems, this need for an example that also expresses a taste for history and a need for more truth than entertainment from the author of biographies. (shrink)

Charles Hartshorne: Biography and Psychology of Sensation Charles Hartshorne is widely regarded as having been an important figure in twentieth century metaphysics and philosophy of religion. His contributions are wide-ranging. He championed the aspirations of metaphysics when it was unfashionable, and the metaphysic he championed helped change some of the fashions of philosophy. He counted … Continue reading Hartshorne: Biography and Psychology of Sensation →.

In these three Indian biographies dating from the 1920s, Romain Rolland introduces the French reader to Gandhi's political struggle and to the spiritual careers of Ramakrishna and his disciple Vivekananda, while revealing the deep meaning of his attraction to Hindu India at this time of his life.

In referring to biographies of Edison as examples, the following are shown: the image of a scientist or an engineer in biographies has dramatically changed over time; the images produced anew in each period fitted well to the social milieu of the day; biographies therefore acquired a large readership and contributed to informing to the public of the value of science and technology and the necessity of promoting them. It is also pointed out that a new image of scientist or (...) engineer is to be created which is surely attractive to people today if we expect biographies to remain effective in promoting public understanding of science as before. (shrink)

Since the project on Modes of Existence has been long in coming and has connection with all the successive field works done by the author, the paper tries to retrace the main steps that have led to the project. It shows that this project precedes the work done in actor-network theory and explains the link between philosophy and anthropology through the peculiar notion of mode of existence.

"Daß der philosophisch Interessierte ein aufwendig recherchiertes und... im Detail verläßliches Werk vor sich hat, attestiert man gern, wobei die Benutzerfreundlichkeit unter anderem durch die ausführliche Chronik im Anhang gewährleistet ist.... der Verfasser [stellt] sein sicheres Gespür für das Eigenartige und Markante sowie die ungewöhnliche Rhythmik des nachgezeichneten Lebens unter Beweis."Ulrich Horstmann in Süddeutsche Zeitung vom 19./20.6.1999, S. V"Die gründliche Gadamer-Biographie von Jean Grondin ist im wesentlichen frei von hagiographischen Zügen. Um so überzeugender entwirft sie das Porträt eines zunächst zögernden (...) und unsicheren, eines unpolitischen und anpassungsfähigen, aber stets liberalen und selbstkritischen, vom gutbürgerlichen Elternhaus mit Klugheit, Sensibilität und sicherem Blick ausgestatteten, humanistisch gebildeten und unabhängig urteilenden Geistes."Jürgen Habermas in Neue Zürcher Zeitung vom 12./13.2.2000, S. 49. (shrink)

This book constitutes the first volume of a projected two-volume intellectual biography of Auguste Comte, the founder of modern sociology and a philosophical movement called positivism. Volume One offers a reinterpretation of Comte's "first career," (1798-1842) when he completed the scientific foundation of his philosophy. It describes the interplay between Comte's ideas and the historical context of postrevolutionary France, his struggles with poverty and mental illness, and his volatile relationships with friends, family, and colleagues, including such famous contemporaries as (...) Saint-Simon, the Saint-Simonians, Guizot, and John Stuart Mill. Pickering shows that the man who called for a new social philosophy based on the sciences was not only ill at ease in the most basic human relationships, but also profoundly questioned the ability of the purely scientific spirit to regenerate the political and social world. (shrink)

The Biography of God offers a personal encounter with God-one that is uplifting, instructive, and practical for every area of life. This is a very conversational-style book that inspires, encourages, and enables readers to know God better.

The biographies of animal celebrities published by the historians John Simons and Eric Baratay aim to place animals in and of themselves at the center of academic narratives. Both excavate the lived experiences concealed behind official discourses and collective representations, notably by relying on cross-fertilization with ethological research. They unveil the ways in which information was reshaped in order to portray animal celebrities as benevolent members of human-animal communities, and thereby shed light on the mechanics of animal commodification. The close (...) examination of a few individual animal trajectories enlightens the condition of many historical animals living under human tutelage in the 19th and early 20th century and highlights long-term historical evolutions, such as the succession of animal cultures and generations largely determined by human actions. (shrink)

Kelly Dean Jolley - Wittgenstein: Biography and Philosophy - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.4 552-554 Book Review Wittgenstein: Biography and Philosophy James C. Klagge, editor. Wittgenstein: Biography and Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xv + 272. Cloth, $54.95. Paper, $19.95. Collected in this volume are papers from the 1999 conference "Wittgenstein: Biography and Philosophy," along with a few other relevant papers. Ray Monk's and James (...) Conant's papers frame the others and provide terms of criticism appropriate to them. Both authors investigate the relationship between philosophy and biography. Each finds in Wittgenstein an elucidation of a variety of understanding needful for appreciating the variety of understanding at which biography aims. Monk argues that the variety of understanding that consists in seeing connections (between the life and work of the.. (shrink)

This chapter exhibits elements of the origins of David Lewis, philosopher and human being, and whose works we know. It describes important influences on David as a child, as an adolescent, and young man. The chapter begins with the last, and most important, of the forces that shaped the adult David, and made him the philosopher that he was. The chapter dealing with childhood and early adolescence draws partly on Lewis family myth and folklore, but primarily on an autobiography he (...) wrote, at the age of 14, in his next‐to‐last year of high school. David also showed early signs of the high‐mindedness that characterized him for his entire life. The chapter also looks at David's early life. What Australia, and the Australians, did for him was to take him out of himself and make him into a member of community. (shrink)

Why does an object or phenomenon become the subject of scientific inquiry? Why do some of these objects remain provocative, while others fade from center stage? And why do objects sometimes return as the focus of research long after they were once abandoned? Addressing such questions, _Biographies of Scientific Objects_ is about how whole domains of phenomena—dreams, atoms, monsters, culture, society, mortality, centers of gravity, value, cytoplasmic particles, the self, tuberculosis—come into being and sometimes pass away as objects of scientific (...) study. With examples drawn from both the natural and social sciences, and ranging from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, this book explores the ways in which scientific objects are both real and historical. Whether discovered or invented, these objects of inquiry broaden and deepen in meaning—growing more "real"—as they become entangled in webs of cultural significance, material practices, and theoretical derivations. Thus their biographies will matter to anyone concerned with the formation of scientific knowledge. Contributors are Jed Z. Buchwald, Lorraine Daston, Rivka Feldhay, Jan Goldstein, Gerard Jorland, Doris Kauffman, Bruno Latour, Theodore M. Porter, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Marshall Sahlins, and Peter Wagner. (shrink)

The paper explores biographical experiences for the understanding of social phenomena, both in the writings of Alfred Schutz himself and in sociological empirical approaches based on his work. Schutz handles biography at least in two different ways: as a manner to investigate the “because” motives for one’s action and as a way to exemplify his theoretical considerations. The first step will be to discuss the biographical experience as a key aspect to understand the motivation for action. It will be (...) argued that for Schutz, biography is not exclusively an individual life’s trajectory, but results of both individual and social experiences, synthesized on the individual relevance systems, which are embedded by the relevance systems of the community in which one has been socialized. In the second step the paper verifies how Schutz deals with his own biographical experiences to discuss theoretical and empirical aspects of his sociology. Examples of the first kind of use of biography by Schutz are, for instance, “The Stranger” and “The Homecomer”, which will be considered in this paper. A third step aims to discuss how these writings influenced empirical researches in sociology based on biographical narratives as a way to access empirically the social construction of reality. (shrink)

This is the first full-length biography in more than fifty years of Immanuel Kant, one of the giants amongst 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. In this biography, Manfred Kuehn debunks that myth once and for all. Taking account of the most recent scholarship Professor Kuehn allows the reader to follow the same journey that Kant himself took in emerging as a central figure in modern philosophy. (shrink)

Literature, for Sartre, it could be said, is not so much an object of theory as the focus of a question. The notion of 'committed literature' is less prescriptive than it is interrogative: the title of the text most commonly associated with 'littérature engagée' is, after all, a question about literature itself, and the nature of 'commitment' lends itself much more to a practice of contestation than to implementation of any particular programme. In what follows, I shall be examining some (...) of the ways in which Sartre makes literature synonymous with a question. And I shall be arguing that the very terms in which literature is presented as a form of self-contestation make biography, rather than theory, the arena in which the notion of literature is most extensively opened up. (shrink)