Speaking of food, I think the award for “most entertaining Kant work” has to go to Der Streit der Facultäten. Prompted by the chilly reception on the part of Prussian state officials towards Kant’s Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft (Religion Within the Bounds of Reason Alone), Kant’s late attempt at a “natural theology”, The Conflict of the Faculties has interesting things to say about the relationship between philosophy and theology: including a claim that is remarkably unremarked upon, that the critique of pure reason was a “philosophy of the person”.

However, by the time he gets around to the relationship between philosophy and medicine, we are treated to Kant’s diet and exercise advice; perhaps a not wholly serious manner saves Kant’s words concerning the temperature the head and feet should be kept at from being in a class with Nietzsche’s advertisment for morning hot chocolate (“No coffee. Coffee spreads darkness.”) – but sometimes details are indeed extraneous.

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