Prologue 17IIDuring the two hundred years since Kant's death, not many full biogra¬
phical treatments of Kant have been written. Though a recent bibliography
of works on Kant's life takes up 23 pages and lists 483 titles, most of these
concern minutiae that are of little interest even to those most keenly in¬
trigued by Kant's philosophy.^56 Rolf George finds in a recent review of Kant
biographies that there are really only "half a dozen early reminiscences,
and four later full dress biographies"; the rest, he thinks, are, if not down¬
right irrelevant, then at best only of marginal interest.^57 George is perhaps
a little too harsh in his judgment. There are (a few) more books and articles
of biographical interest than he is willing to admit. Yet it is undeniable that
there is not as much written on Kant's life as one might reasonably expect.
Furthermore, there has never been a biography that would satisfy the
most stringent requirements of scholarship. Karl Vorländer's two-volume
Immanuel Kant, Man and Work of 1924 comes closest to this ideal, but even
Vorländer did not really attempt to accomplish this task.^58 In a sense, his
ambitions were higher. He did not want to write a book that would be valu¬
able just for the philosopher and scholar, but instead wished to bring "to
life the aged Kant as he lived and thought" for the general reader. The
same is true of his short account called The Life of Immanuel Kant, which
appeared in 1911 and preceded the two-volume biography.^59 Malter claimed
in his preface to the fourth edition of this work (1977) that hardly any new
sources for the externals of Kant's life had appeared since 1924, and that
Vorländer's work thus represents in a sense the "completion" of research
into the externals of Kant's life.^60 This is not quite correct. Vorländer's
work is the touchstone by which all other biographies of Kant must be
measured. It does indeed supersede all previous biographical treatments
of Kant.^61 However, this must not be taken to mean that it is impossible
to go beyond Vorländer or that Vorländer's work is based on the entire ev¬
idence. It is not. Vorländer's sources themselves are to a large extent still
available, and they allow in many cases quite different interpretations. Kurt
Stavenhagen's Kant and Königsberg of 1949 shows how much more im¬
portant the Seven-Year War (the European part of the French and Indian
Wars, 1756-63) were for Kant's development than Vorländer had sug¬
gested. He also tries to show that the young Kant was different from the
old Kant, whom Vorländer had tried to bring to life. Vorländer did not con¬
duct original research. He relied on articles that, although difficult to find
today, can still be found. Finally, Vorländer himself was not as objective as