The essays collected in this volume by Paul Guyer, one of the world's foremost Kant scholars, explore Kant's attempt to develop a morality grounded on the intrinsic and unconditional value of the human freedom to set our own ends. When regulated by the principle that the freedom of all is equally valuable, the freedom to set our own ends -- what Kant calls "humanity" - becomes what he calls autonomy. These essays explore Kant's strategies for establishing the premise that freedom is the inner worth of the world or the essential end of humankind, as he says, and for deriving the specific duties that fundamental principle of morality generates in the empirical circumstances of human existence. The Virtues of Freedom further investigates Kant's attempts to prove that we are always free to live up to this moral ideal, that is, that we have free will no matter what, as well as his more successful explorations of the ways in which our natural tendencies to be moral -- dispositions to the feeling of respect and more specific feelings such as love and self-esteem -- can and must be cultivated and educated. Guyer finally examines the various models of human community that Kant develops from his premise that our associations must be based on the value of freedom for all. The contrasts but also similarities of Kant's moral philosophy to that of David Hume but many of his other predecessors and contemporaries, such as Stoics and Epicureans, Pufendorf and Wolff, Hutcheson, Kames, and Smith, are also explored.
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This volume of essays by one of the world's foremost Kant scholars explores the efforts of the great Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) to construct a moral philosophy based on the premise that the most fundamental value for human beings is their freedom to set their own ends.
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INTRODUCTION; PART I: THE VALUE OF FREEDOM; PART II: THE ACTUALITY OF FREEDOM; PART III: THE ACHIEVEMENT OF FREEDOM; CONCLUSION
This is a masterful achievement by one of the world's foremost Kant scholars. It represents a welcome and original contribution to Kant's ethics. It will be mandatory reading for anyone interested in Kant's conception of freedom ... Guyer succeeds in saying something new about a familiar theme in the way he untangles the novel aspects of Kant's account of the nature and value of moral freedom, and meticulously reconstructs Kant's various attempts to justify the claim that finite rational agents possess the freedom to act on the basis of categorical moral commands ... All of the essays advance scholarly debates about Kant's philosophy in notable ways. Guyer's analysis reflects a mastery of Kant's corpus and a deep knowledge of the relevant views of Kant's most important predecessors and contemporaries
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780198755654
Publisert
2016
Utgiver
Vendor
Oxford University Press
Høyde
232 mm
Bredde
156 mm
Dybde
17 mm
Aldersnivå
UP, 05
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
336

Forfatter

Biographical note

Paul Guyer received his AB and PhD from Harvard University. He has taught at the Universities of Pittsburgh, Illinois-Chicago, Pennsylvania, and Brown University. He is the author, editor, and translator of two dozen previous books, including nine monographs or collections on Kant and the three-volume History of Modern Aesthetics (2014). He has been General Co-Editor of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, for which he has been co-editor of the Critique of Pure Reason and editor of Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment and Notes and Fragments. He is a past president of the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division and the American Society of Aesthetics. He has held numerous fellowships in the United States, has been a Research Prize Winner of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.