NP? "the biographical dimension of intellectual life"

[Doug Millison]

The Life and the Mind
More and more biographies of philosophers are being written. Do they tell
us anything important about philosophy?
By DANNY POSTEL

[...] In recent years, though, other scholars have begun to argue that such
anecdotes tell us a great deal, not only about individual philosophers but
also about the relationship between ideas and life more generally
-- between the way we think and the way we live. Without exploring the
biographical dimension of intellectual life, these scholars argue, our
philosophical understanding is, in some crucial sense, incomplete.
Their camp is growing larger. The past two decades have seen a veritable
explosion in biographical studies of philosophers. Since 1982, more than 30
biographies of philosophers have appeared. Of those, 20 have been published
in the past decade, a dozen just since 1999. And more are in the works.
Some see the trend as principally a reflection of currents in the
publishing world, while others say it is a direct result of conceptual
shifts in philosophy and in intellectual life more generally. But as the
books keep coming, skeptics remain unpersuaded that this biographical
"turn" is of any philosophical importance. [...]

...continues at http://chronicle.com/free/v48/i39/39a01601.htm