Abstract

The broadest aim of Wood’s project is the improvement of our own self-understanding by: “replacing commonly accepted ideas” about Kant’s ethical thought with “more accurate and less oversimplified ones”, the hope is that this “might help to transform our conception of our own history and of ourselves as heirs of the Enlightenment”. Our age, writes Wood, “needs Kant’s sober, principled hope for a more rational, cosmopolitan future”.