Philosophers are noted for their exquisite parties—replete with red wine and raconteuring, Ferrero Rocher pyramids and reminiscences of Frank Ramsey. The tradition of the philosophical party goes back to Plato’s Symposium, with its eloquent speeches about love—an occasion recreated, more or less, at the reception of every philosophy colloquium.
Sounds a bit like even the Kant of the Anthropology still hadn't fully gotten up from his dogmatic slumber. Attempting to prove that dinner parties are the objectively superior synthesis - that seems like the kind of deduction of reality from first principles that you'd find in the early Leibnizian Kant, where you know the people living on Venus must be lazy because it's hot.
Was Kant married, Kieran? I don't know anything about Kant but wonder- a la Mary Midgley- if there's a relation between a philosopher's life (in this case sociability) and their philosophy?
So the film depicting him as “abstemious and abstruse” (“The Last Days of Immanuel Kant”) was half wrong?
Sounds a bit like even the Kant of the Anthropology still hadn't fully gotten up from his dogmatic slumber. Attempting to prove that dinner parties are the objectively superior synthesis - that seems like the kind of deduction of reality from first principles that you'd find in the early Leibnizian Kant, where you know the people living on Venus must be lazy because it's hot.
I’ll be getting my students to read this, who have (understandably!) found him tough going
Was Kant married, Kieran? I don't know anything about Kant but wonder- a la Mary Midgley- if there's a relation between a philosopher's life (in this case sociability) and their philosophy?
Immanuel Kant is one of the West’s most daringly creative thinkers. Great to see his work being appreciated!