Diese Biografie ist der erste Versuch, Leben und Wirken des fast vergessenen fuhrenden Junghegelianers Theodor Echtermeyer zu rekonstruieren. Obgleich infolge seines fruhen Todes viele entscheidende Quellen nicht uberliefert sind, gelingt es dem Autor, ein schlussiges Bild von Echtermeyers Personlichkeit zu entwerfen, seine Rolle als Initiator und Mitherausgeber der -Hallischen Jahrbucher- zu zeigen und seine bedeutende konzeptionelle Leistung anzudeuten. Ein Anhang von Texten, darunter drei Erstveroffentlichungen, unterstutzt dieses Anliegen.".

Biografie van de Nederlandse filosoof G.J.P.J. Bolland (1854-1922).

Diese Biographie entwirft ein neuartiges Bild von einem der bedeutendsten Denker des 20. Jahrhunderts. Erstmals werden darin die reichen Editionen kürzerer Texte und Vorlesungen Michel Foucaults, die seit Mitte der 1990er Jahre entstanden sind, biographisch ausgewertet und für neue Einsichten in den Zusammenhang von Leben und Werk des einflussreichen Theoretikers fruchtbar gemacht. Stärker als die gängigen biographischen Deutungen lässt diese Biographie Foucaults Texte und seine Stimme selbst sprechen und wird so einem Leben, das im Medium des Denkens nach (...) Freiheit strebte, in besonderer Weise gerecht. (shrink)

En kompleks biografi om filosoffen, forfatteren og privatpersonen Søren Kierkegaards (1813-1855) liv og forfatterskab med en sanset og indlevet skildring af hans samtid og tankeverden.

Uit familie-foto's en tekstfragmenten van brieven en aantekeningen samengestelde biografie van de Joods-Oostenrijkse, later in Engeland gevestigde wijsgeer (1889-1951).

English description: Red mda' ba gZhon nu blo gros (1348-1412) played a pivotal role in the history of Tibetan Buddhists' engagement with Indian Madhyamaka, especially with regard to Candrakirti's interpretation of Nagarjuna. The lasting impact of this historical figure on the shape of Buddhist philosophy in Tibet - and particularly that of Madhyamaka - has been highly underestimated to date. Red mda' ba was an important teacher of scholastic Buddhist philosophy to the three main founders of Tibetan dGe lugs tradition. (...) On the basis of this biography, Red mda' ba's contribution to the spiritual culture of Buddhism at his time can now be analyzed. It elucidates his influence in upgrading philosophical studies and dialectics, and expanding scholastic education in the monasteries, as well as his contribution to Tsong kha pa's foundation of the dGe lugs pa school, the lineage to which the Dalai Lamas belong. This work therefore aims to present the first detailed exposition of this crucial figure of Tibetan culture. The thesis presents a critical edition and English translation of the biography of Red mda' ba. German description: Red mda' ba gZhon nu blo gros (1348-1412) spielte eine entscheidende Rolle in der Geschichte der Beschaftigung tibetischer Buddhisten mit der indischen Madhyamaka Philosophie, insbesondere hinsichtlich Candrakirtis Auslegung von Nagarjuna. Der nachhaltige Einfluss dieser historischen Figur auf die Form der buddhistischen Philosophie in Tibet - vor allem die des Madhyamaka - wurde bislang wesentlich unterschatzt. Red mda' ba war ein wichtiger Lehrer fur scholastische Buddhismus-Philosophie der drei Grundergestalten der tibetischen dGe lugs-Tradition. Auf der Grundlage dieser Biografie kann nun Red mda' bas Beitrag zur geistigen Kultur des Buddhismus seiner Zeit untersucht werden. Sie zeigt beispielsweise, wie Red mda' ba den Ausbau der philosophischen Studien und der Dialektik beeinflusste, die scholastische Ausbildung in den Klostern erweiterte und massgeblich an Tsong kha pas Grundung der dGe lugs pa-Schule mitwirkte, einer Richtung, der auch die Dalai Lamas angehoren. Daher ist es Ziel dieser Arbeit, eine erste umfassende Darstellung des Lebenswerkes und Vermachtnisses dieser Schlusselfigur tibetischer Kultur und Geistesgeschichte zu geben. Sie umfasst die kritische Edition und die englische Ubersetzung der Biografie von Red mda' ba. (shrink)

Der vierbändige Titel Die Welt der Philosophin liefert eine anschauliche Darstellung vom Leben einzelnen Philosophinnen, die als Repräsentantinnen ihrer Zeit zu sehen sind. Mit Auszügen aus ihren Texten (zum Teil erstmals in deutscher Übersetzung), ausführlichen Einführungen in die historische Epoche mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Lage der Frauen und einer ausführlichen Biografie bieten die Bände spannenden Einblicke in das Leben von Philosophinnen. The four-volume title The World of the Female Philosopher provides a vivid account of the lives of individual female (...) philosophers who are to be seen as representatives of their times. With excerpts from their texts (some of them in German translation for the first time), detailed introductions to the historical epoch with special attention to the situation of women and a detailed biography, the volumes offer exciting insights into the lives of women philosophers. (shrink)

L’articolo si propone di chiarire uno dei punti oscuri della biografia di Giordano Bruno. Nel 1571 il Capitolo generale dei Domenicani di Roma lo assegnò come studente formale allo Studio di Andria. Secondo i suoi più importanti biografi, il Nolano non ci sarebbe mai andato. Attraverso l’accurata analisi dei documenti relativi al corso di studi, e il riscontro delle citazioni contenute in alcune opere, l’ipotesi che Bruno abbia soggiornato ad Andria per circa un anno appare, invece, estremamente probabile. The article (...) tries to clarify one of the obscure points of Giordano Bruno’s biography. In 1571 the General Chapter of the Dominicans in Rome assigned him, as a formal student, to the Study of Andria. According to his most important biographers, the Nolan never went there. However, through the careful analysis of the documents relating to his course of studies, and the comparison of the quotations contained in some of his works, the hypothesis that Bruno stayed in Andria for about a year appears extremely probable. (shrink)

In questo articolo ci si occupa di come il regno e la vita di due califfi abbasidi siano ritratti e valutati dalle fonti narrative arabe medievali. Hārūn al-Rashīd e al-Muqtadir divennero, pochi decenni dopo la loro morte, il paradigma del buono e del cattivo califfo rispettivamente; tuttavia, i loro lunghi califfatia le loro biografie personali presentano diversi elementi comuni. Un'analisi di temi simili presenti nelle rappresentazioni dei due sovrani illustrano mezzi e strategie narrativi impiegati dalle fonti, nel tentativo di (...) stabilire quali fattori determinino lo sviluppo di una reputazione post-mortem positiva o negativa.This paper looks at how the lives and reigns of two Abbasid caliphs are portrayed and evaluated in medieval Arabic narrative sources. Hārūn al-Rashīd and al-Muqtadir became, only a few decades after their death, the paradigm of the good and the bad caliph respectively. However, their long caliphates as well as their personal biographies share several elements. An analysis of similar themes in the portrayals of the two rulers illustrates narrative means and strategies employed by the sources, in an attempt to establish which factors determine the development of a positive or negative post-mortem reputation. (shrink)

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)

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)

Artykuł ma na celu wskazanie filozoficznych źródeł zarówno akcesu Martina Heideggera do ruchu nazistowskiego, jak i późniejszego zerwania przez myśliciela z zaangażowaniem politycznym. Drogę Heideggera do i od narodowego socjalizmu należy uchwycić nie tylko poprzez biografię filozofa, lecz przede wszystkim na szerszym tle procesu kształtowania się jego rozumienia polityki jako obszaru bytu wydzielonego i zagospodarowanego przez zachodnią metafizykę, co stanowi przejaw wypełnienia istoty metafizyki jako zapomnienia o byciu. Filozofię Heideggera wielokrotnie diagnozowano (por. np. Löwith, Adorno) jako głęboko powiązaną ze światopoglądem (...) faszystowskim; przyjęta tutaj linia argumentacji podkreśla, przeciwnie, integralność etycznej linii argumentacji dzieła Heideggera, akcentującej w odniesieniu do polityki jej charakter eksploatacji bytu, podobnie jak uniformizacji człowieka i przemiany go w zasób. Konkluzja odsłania zatem głęboko antyfaszystowski wydźwięk pism Heideggera z lat 1936 – 1946 i podkreśla zarazem niepokojącą indyferencję w stosunku Heideggera do totalitarnych i nietotalitarnych systemów politycznych. Overcoming Metaphysics, Overcoming Politics. Martin Heidegger’s Path to and from National Socialism: This paper aims to equally pinpoint the philosophical origins of Martin Heidegger’s entry into the Nazi movement and the thinker’s subsequent break with political involvement. Heidegger’s path to and from National Socialism should be apprehended not only through the philosopher’s biography but, above all, within the broader framework of the process of the development of his understanding of politics as an area of being set apart and accommodated by Western metaphysics, which marks the fulfillment of the essence of metaphysics as a forgetting of being. Heidegger’s philosophy has been repeatedly diagnosed (cf., e.g., Löwith, Adorno) as deeply linked to the fascist worldview; the line of reasoning taken up in this paper insists, on the contrary, on the integrity of the ethical reasoning behind Heidegger’s work, which emphasizes, concerning politics, its character of exploiting being, in the same way as it uniformizes people and transforms them into a resource. The conclusion, therefore, reveals the profoundly anti-fascist overtones of Heidegger’s writings from 1936–1946 and, simultaneously, underscores a worrying indifference to Heidegger’s relationship to totalitarian and non-totalitarian political systems. (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)

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)

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 this article, we investigate how the concept of Care Biography and related concepts are understood and operationalised and describe how it can be applied to advancing our understanding and practice of holistic and person‐centred care. Walker and Avant's eight‐step concept analysis method was conducted involving multiple database searches, with potential or actual applications of Care Biography identified based on multiple discussions among all authors. Our findings demonstrate Care Biography to be a novel overarching concept derived from (...) the conjunction of multiple other concepts and applicable across multiple care settings. Concepts related to Care Biography exist but were more narrowly defined and mainly applied in intensive care, aged care, and palliative care settings. They are associated with the themes of Meaningfulness and Existential Coping, Empathy and Understanding, Promoting Positive Relationships, Social and Cultural Contexts, and Self‐Care, which we used to inform and refine our concept analysis of Care Biography. In Conclusion, the concept of Care Biography, can provide a deeper understanding of a person and their care needs, facilitate integrated and personalised care, empower people to be in control of their care throughout their life, and help promote ethical standards of care. (shrink)

Short biographies of twenty world famous philosophers.

La vie d'Empédocle par Diogène Laërce (Hippobotos).--Histoire de la tradition.--Biographie d'Empédocle.

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)

The problem of how to make the transition to a more environmentally and socially sustainable society poses questions about how such far-reaching social change can be brought about. In recent years, lifecourse transitions have been identified by a range of researchers as opportunities for policy and other actors to intervene to change how individuals use energy, taking advantage of such disruptive transitions to encourage individuals to be reflexive toward their lifestyles and how they use the technological infrastructures on which they (...) rely. Such identifications, however, employ narratives of voluntary change that take an overly optimistic view of how individuals experience lifecourse transitions and ignore effects of experiences of unresolved or unsuccessful transitions. Drawing on interview data from the Energy Biographies project at Cardiff University, we explore three case studies where the effects of such unresolved transitions are significant. Using the concept of liminal transition as developed by Victor Turner, we examine instances where “progressive” narratives of energy use reduction clash with other “narrative genres” used to make sense of change. Such clashes show how narratives that view lifecourse transitions as opportunities ignore the challenges that such transitions may pose to efforts to construct or sustain identities. (shrink)

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.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reading BiographyMichael Benton (bio)Biographer, Biography, and the ReaderBiography is a hybrid. It is history crossed with narrative. The biographer has to present the available facts of the life yet shape their arbitrariness, untidiness, and incompleteness into an engaging whole. The readerly appeal lies in the prospect both of gaining documentary information, scrupulously researched and plausibly interpreted, and of experiencing the aesthetic pleasure of reading a well-made work of (...) art with a continuous life story and a satisfying closure. "In the family of literature," one of its most respected practitioners asserts, "biography seems to be the product of a strange coupling between old-fashioned history and the traditional novel."1 The invitation of biography is thus a dualistic one; the aesthetic experience it offers stems from the twofoldness of its nature and from the stance that this imposes upon the reader. Literary biographies of poets and novelists offer a particularly fruitful area of study since their subjects have a special concern for aesthetic experience and the biographers' main interest lies in the relationship between the life and the works. Though much of what follows has a wider application, the focus of this article is on biographies of writers. By triangulating the roles of the biographer, the biographee within the biographical text, and the reader we can conceptualize the elements that make up the invitation of the genre.First, the biographer. Richard Holmes characterizes the process he experiences with two keywords: it is a "pursuit" and it is a "haunting." They are two sides of the same phenomenon. The pursuit is a "tracking of the physical trail of someone's path through the past, a following of footsteps," an effort "to write about the pursuit of that fleeting figure in such a way as to bring it alive in the present."2 The haunting occurs when this revivification succeeds and the biographee is brought imaginatively alive. Then the biographer turns from pursuer to pursued. While the subject does not take [End Page 77] him over, as it might in some Gothic fantasy, it does exercise the power of the past upon the present and haunt the biographer's imagination. Holmes goes on to explain the two main elements as "closely entwined strands":The first is the gathering of factual materials, the assembling in chronological order of a man's "journey" through the world—the actions, the words, the recorded thoughts, the places and faces through which he moved: the "life and letters." The second is the creation of a fictional or imaginary relationship between the biographer and his subject; not merely a "point of view" or an "interpretation," but a continuous living dialogue between the two... It is fictional, imaginary, because of course the subject cannot really, literally, talk back; but the biographer must come to act and think of his subject as if he can.3Not every biographer would necessarily subscribe to this particular description, but there is ample evidence in the recent spate of books about the genre4 that the biographer's capacity for imaginative empathy is continuously interacting with the verifiable historical data. The present operates upon the past in other ways, too. Earlier biographers who are more or less contemporary with their subjects (for example, Boswell, Forster, Mrs. Gaskell)5 stand in different relationships with them and the available data about them compared with present-day biographers who may inherit a whole bibliography of "lives" laid down in stratified layers on top of the life they are trying to recover. The modern reader, like the modern biographer, has to be a literary archaeologist. Dickens's "lives," for example, are constructed on a bedrock of his friend Forster's biography and on the novelist's own writings, neither of which subsequent biographers can afford to ignore. Later "lives" also have to be sifted through: our inherited Dickens is compounded from a series of accounts from, among a host of others, the Victorian memoirs of his daughter6 and his reading manager,7 via Edwardian enthusiasts8 and 1930s revelations about Dickens's private life,9 to those of modern academics and writers in our own time.10 In such cases, bringing the subject... (shrink)

This article examines the theory of personality compatible with Marxism developed by the French Marxist philosopher Lucien Sève, examines his view of how a Marxist biography should be written and how actual biographies should be evaluated. The conclusion is that Marxist biography should be distinctive, and that Sève has presented a plausible sketch of what a Marxist biography should look like. But he has also laid down an incredibly difficult set of criteria for success in which even (...) Marxists themselves fail to satisfy in their biographical writing, and perhaps unsurprisingly no one does, or perhaps could ever, fulfil all the criteria of such a biography, however potentially worthwhile the effort. (shrink)

A comprehensive biography which covers Adorno's life, work and times: from childhood, through to his student years, his years in emigration, his return to post-war Germany, his time in Frankfurt, his role as a public intellectual, and his ...

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)

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)

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)

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.

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)

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.

Prof. Iyengar's biography of Sri Aurobindo, long a standard reference work, is now in its fifth edition. The author's subtitle indicates the depth and breadth of the book, as it links the life of Sri Aurobindo, who played for our age the crucial role of leader of humanity's evolving destiny , with the history of India and the world. It also provides detailed discussions of Sri Aurobindo's writings, from the early poems and plays to the politics of Bande Mataram, (...) from the philosophy and social thought of the Arya to the epic masterpiece of Savitri, as the essential keys to understanding his life and work. This book is available again after a long time. (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)

Taking off from reflections about the relation of biographical writing to fiction, this essay considers the ways in which scientific biography can explore the cultural dynamics of science. The author examines her own experience in using biography to write history of science and refers to several other examples of biographies of eighteenth‐century figures that raise issues specific to the persona of the man of science and his audiences in this period.

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)