Categorically not dull

You think he just wrote difficult philosophy, instructing us in the requirements of the categorical imperative. Not so:

He has been famously portrayed as a bore, a man whose habits were so regular that housewives could set their watches by his legendary afternoon walk.

But according to three new biographies, the celebrated German philosopher Immanuel Kant was not such a dry stick after all. Far from being a dour Prussian ascetic, the great metaphysician was a partygoer. He enjoyed drinking wine, playing billiards and wearing fine, colourful clothes.

The discrepancy between his sober reputation and this wild side has to do, apparently, with a difference between the old Kant and a younger Kant. As to the latter:

He was a very social type who often went to parties and sometimes drank too much. At times Kant could not find the street where he lived because he was so inebriated.

"He had a sense of humour. Not a German sense of humour where you have to spell out that you are telling a joke but a dry Anglo-Saxon wit."

According to [Manfred] Kühn, whose acclaimed biography of the philosopher has just been published in Germany, Kant also had "amorous interests" in two women - though there is no evidence these were consummated.

The boy knew how to party.