Kant's Brain Lesion

[James Brody]

There are treasures...

I remember the honors program and the literary types, the ones with unlabored grammar decorated like a Christmas tree, who debated the subtleties of Kant's Categorical Imperative. Memories returned of that gang whenI read the following in Gazzaniga:

"...a young French doctor...wanted to talk about Immanuel Kant's brain lesion. His what? Dr. Jean-Christophe Marchand had been reading about Kant's life and medical history. Until Kant reached the age of forty-seven or so, his writings were straight-forward and, believe or not, clear. After this age, Kant began to write his great philosophical works, which emphasize that innate cognitive structures exist independent of emotions. Nearly impossible to read, his works make Jean Piaget's 'writing' seem lucid. But Marchand's points are tantalizing. Kant began to complain of headaches and other maladies and gradually lost vision in his left eye. Dr. Marchand deduced that Kant had a left prefrontal lobe tumor---growing slowly but there. Damage to this area affects language ability and the ability of our emotional system to cue us toward good cognitive strategies. Is it possible that all those Kantians have saluted a man who was writing nonsense---a philosophy for those who do not have a normal cognitive and emotional system?"

I think this snippet is an absolute riot...


Reference
Gazzaniga M (1998) The Mind's Past. Berkley, CA: University of California Press, p 120.