Kant's Moral and Legal Philosophy

344 Pages·2009·2.84 MB·English

by  Otfried Hoeffe

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Kant’s Moral and Legal Philosophy
Kant’s Moral and Legal Philosophy brings to English readers the finest
postwar German-language scholarship on Kant’s moral and legal philoso-
phy. Examining Kant’s relation to predecessors such as Hutcheson, Wolff,
and Baumgarten, it clarifies the central issues in each of Kant’s major works
in practical philosophy, including The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of
Morals, The Critique of Practical Reason, and The Metaphysics of Morals. It
also examines the relation of Kant’s philosophy to politics.
Collectively, the essays in this volume provide English readers with a direct
view of the way leading contemporary German philosophers now look at
Kant’s revolutionary practical philosophy – one of the outstanding achieve-
ments of German thought.
Karl Ameriks is McMahon-Hank Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Notre Dame. A recipient of fellowships from the Humboldt Foundation, the
National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned
Societies, and the Earhart Foundation, he is the author of several books,
including Kant’s Theory of Mind and Kant and the Fate of Autonomy, and
editor of The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism. He is also coedi-
tor of the series Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy.
Otfried Höffe is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tübingen and
permanent visiting Professor of the Philosophy of Law at the University of St.
Gallen. He is also Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Porto Allegre
(PUCRS), Fellow of the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, and
Fellow of The German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. He is the author of
Immanuel Kant, Political Justice, Categorical Principles of Law, Aristotle,
Kant’s Cosmopolitian Theory of Law and Peace: Democracy in an Age of
Globalisation, and many other books in German. He has coedited Hegel on
Ethics and Politics, edited Lexikon der Ethik and Lesebuch zur Ethik, and
is editor of Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, the series Denker, and
Klassiker Auslegen. With Robert Pippin, he is coeditor of the Cambridge
series The German Philosophical Tradition.

The German Philosophical Tradition
This series makes available in English for the first time important recent
work by German philosophers on major figures in the German philosoph-
ical tradition. The volumes provide critical perspectives on philosophers
of great significance to the Anglo-American philosophical community,
perspectives that have been largely ignored except by a handful of writers
of German philosophy. The dissemination of this work will be of enor-
mous value to Anglophone students and scholars of German philosophy.
Otfried Höffe is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tübingen.
Robert B. Pippin is Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service
Professor in the Committee on Social Thought, Department of Philosophy,
and the College, University of Chicago.

Kant’s Moral and Legal Philosophy
Edited by
Karl Ameriks
University of Notre Dame
Otfried Höffe
University of Tübingen
Translated by
Nicholas Walker
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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First published in print format 2009
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Contents
acknowledgments page ix
contributors xi
works by kant xv
Introduction 1
Karl Ameriks and Otfried Höffe
I EARLY CONCEPTIONS
1 Hutcheson and Kant 29
Dieter Henrich
2 The Theory of Obligation in Wolff, Baumgarten, and
the Early Kant 58
Clemens Schwaiger
II GROUNDWORK OF THE METAPHYSICS OF
MORALS
3 What Is the Purpose of a Metaphysics of Morals?
Some Observations on the Preface to the Groundwork of
the Metaphysics of Morals 77
Ludwig Siep
4 The Transition from Common Rational Moral Knowledge to
Philosophical Rational Moral Knowledge in the Groundwork 93
Dieter Schönecker
5 Reason Practical in Its Own Right 123
Gerold Prauss
vii
viii ConTenTs
6 Kant’s Justification of the Role of Maxims in Ethics 134
Michael Albrecht
III CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON
7 The Form of the Maxim as the Determining Ground of
the Will (The Critique of Practical Reason: §§4–6, 27–30) 159
Otfried Höffe
8 ‘On the Concept of an Object of Pure Practical Reason’
(Chapter 2 of the Analytic of Practical Reason) 179
Annemarie Pieper
9 The Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason in the Second Critique
(CPrR:107–121) 198
Eckart Förster
10 The Postulates of Pure Practical Reason (CPrR:122–148) 213
Friedo Ricken
IV LEGAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
11 On How to Acquire Something External, and Especially on the
Right to Things (A Commentary on the Metaphysics of Morals
§§10–17) 231
Kristian Kühl
12 ‘The Civil Constitution in Every State Shall Be a
Republican One’ 246
Wolfgang Kersting
13 Commentary on Kant’s Treatment of Constitutional Right
(Metaphysics of Morals II: General Remark A; §§51–52,
Conclusion, Appendix) 265
Bernd Ludwig
14 Refusing Sovereign Power – The Relation between Philosophy
and Politics in the Modern Age 284
Volker Gerhardt
bibliography 305
index 317