However, throughout his career he regularly lectured on a wide range of moral and political philosophers of the past. This volume collects these previously unpublished lectures.

This major addition to Ideas in Context examines the development of natural law theories in the early stages of the Enlightenment in Germany and France. T. J. Hochstrasser investigates the influence exercised by theories of natural law from Grotius to Kant, with a comparative analysis of the important intellectual innovations in ethics and political philosophy of the time. Hochstrasser includes the writings of Samuel Pufendorf and his followers who evolved a natural law theory based on human sociability and reason, fostering (...) a new methodology in German philosophy. This book assesses the first histories of political thought since ancient times, giving insights into the nature and influence of debate within eighteenth-century natural jurisprudence. Ambitious in range and conceptually sophisticated, Natural Law Theories in the Early Enlightenment will be of great interest to scholars in history, political thought, law and philosophy. Natural Law Theories in the Early Enlightenment has been selected as the winner of the annual Morris D. Forkosch Prize for the best book in intellectual history published in 2000. (shrink)

The book presents a reconstruction of the development of Kant’s ethical thought from the 1760s till the "Metaphysics of Morals" of 1797 with a focus on the evolution of Kant’s overall project in practical philosophy. The main steps in the development of his practical philosophy are interpreted as successive attempts to connect normative ethics with an innovative preliminary descriptive inquiry. The book reconstructs the different ways in which Kant focuses this plan, stressing both the unity and the breaks in Kant’s (...) development. I thus distinguish three main phases, characterised by a different systematic project. The first part is devoted to Kant’s work on moral theory up to 1769. The second part examines Kant’s new ethical project from 1770 to 1785, while the third part considers the further developments from the second "Critique" to the "Metaphysics of Morals". (shrink)

In many histories of modern ethics, Kant is supposed to have ushered in an anti-realist or constructivist turn by holding that unless we ourselves 'author' or lay down moral norms and values for ourselves, our autonomy as agents will be threatened. In this book, Robert Stern challenges the cogency of this 'argument from autonomy', and claims that Kant never subscribed to it. Rather, it is not value realism but the apparent obligatoriness of morality that really poses a challenge to our (...) autonomy: how can this be accounted for without taking away our freedom? The debate the book focuses on therefore concerns whether this obligatoriness should be located in ourselves, in others or in God. Stern traces the historical dialectic that drove the development of these respective theories, and clearly and sympathetically considers their merits and disadvantages; he concludes by arguing that the choice between them remains open. (shrink)

At the core of Kant's ethics lies the claim that if there is a supreme principle of morality then it cannot be a principle based on utilitarianism or Aristotelian perfectionism or the Ten Commandments. The only viable candidate for such a principle is the categorical imperative. This book is the most detailed investigation of this claim. It constructs a new, criterial reading of Kant's derivation of one version of the categorical imperative: the Formula of Universal Law. This reading shows this (...) derivation to be far more compelling than contemporary philosophers tend to believe. It also reveals a novel approach to deriving another version of the categorical imperative, the Formula of Humanity, a principle widely considered to be the most attractive Kantian candidate for the supreme principle of morality. This book will be important not just for Kant scholars but for a broad swathe of students of philosophy. (shrink)

Gefragt wird, warum Kant, für den es nur einen obersten Grundsatz der Moral gibt, in der Kritik der praktischen Vernunft ausführlich nicht nur von einer Mehrheit von Grundsätzen spricht, sondern auch mit deren Erörterung seine Darlegungen beginnt. Gezeigt wird, dass der eine Grundsatz, der formal ist, aus Gründen, die in der Natur des Menschen liegen, gegenüber materialen Annahmen, die zu einer Vielzahl von Grundsätzen führen, eigens verteidigt werden muss und dass dies nicht nur in einer Weise der Destruktion der anderen (...) Positionen geschehen kann, sondern dass hierfür auch deren Integration in das corpus der praktischen Philosophie erforderlich ist. Generell gesagt bedeutet dies, dass Kants Theorie der Formalität des einen Grundsatzes Grundsätze, die sich an einer Materie orientieren, keineswegs einfach verwirft. Kants Theorie gibt solchen Grundsätzen innerhalb der praktischen Philosophie, insbesondere in deren doktrinalen Teil, vielmehr Raum, allerdings nicht durch deren Herleitung aus dem einen Grundsatz, sondern allein durch eine wohlbestimmte Unterordnung unter ihn. Why does Kant, who recognizes only one supreme moral principle, not only speak at length of a multitude of principles in the Critique of Practical Reason but even begin this discussion by explaining them? This paper demonstrates that for reasons inherent to human nature the single principle, which is formal, must be defended particularly against material assumptions that lead to a variety of principles. Furthermore, this defense cannot simply defeat the other positions but needs to integrate them into the corpus of practical philosophy. Accordingly Kant's theory of the formality of the one principle does not simply reject principles oriented toward material assumptions. Instead, his theory gives these principles a position within practical philosophy, particularly within its doctrinal part. It does not do so, however, by deriving them from the one principle but rather solely by subordinating them precisely under this principle. (shrink)