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Introduction Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-89871-3 - Kant’s Moral and Legal Philosophy Edited by Karl Ameriks and Otfried Hoffe Excerpt More information Introduction Karl Ameriks and Otfried Höffe I. Background The widespread influence of Immanuel Kant’s moral and legal philosophy is a striking exception to the division that can often be found between the approaches of modern European philosophy and the Anglophone ana- lytic tradition. Although Kant’s system as a whole exhibits a deeply cos- mopolitan orientation even in its general foundations, his philosophy has become especially relevant in our time primarily because of the numerous practical implications of its central ideal of autonomy, which still deter- mines the dominant liberal views of history, law, and politics.1 The international reception of Kant’s practical philosophy has become so enthusiastic that it has tended to stand in the way of an appreciation of the distinctive contributions of contemporary German Kant scholarship. This development is in one sense a compliment to the openness of German scholars to the outstanding achievements of earlier Anglophone Kantians such as H. J. Paton, Lewis White Beck, and John Rawls. In another sense, however, it may also be a testimony to the perplexing fact that for more than two centuries, Kant’s ethics has often been displaced from a cen- tral position within Germany itself – even though, from the outside, it 1 See, for example, Rechtsphilosophie der Aufklärung, ed. R. Brandt (Berlin, 1982); Autonomy and Community: Readings in Contemporary Kantian Social Philosophy, eds. J. Kneller and S. Axinn (Albany, 1998); and Katerina Deligiorgi, Kant and the Culture of the Enlightenment (Albany, 2005). 1 © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-89871-3 - Kant’s Moral and Legal Philosophy Edited by Karl Ameriks and Otfried Hoffe Excerpt More information 2 KARL AMERIKS AND OTFRIED HÖFFE can appear to be nothing less than the obvious shining glory of German thought.2 Even though Kant’s views had an enormous influence on figures such as Schiller, Fichte, Hegel, Jean-Paul, and Kleist, these views were also quickly regarded as surpassed by the avant-garde in his homeland.3 Most of the first German idealists, positivists, and naturalists mocked Kant’s ethics even as they borrowed from and radicalized his stress on human autonomy. The development of neo-Kantianism at the end of the nine- teenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century did not bring about a fundamental reversal of this tendency. Whatever the intrinsic dis- tinction of their work, the influence of first-rank neo-Kantians such as Hermann Cohen and Ernst Cassirer was minimized by the distressing (to say the least) developments that led to the fall of the Weimar republic. Isolated works on Kant’s ethics by figures such as Leonard Nelson, Julius Ebbinghaus, Gerhard Krüger, and Hans Reiner are interesting excep- tions that only prove the rule of the marginal status of Kantianism in mid-twentieth-century Germany.4 In the bestselling works of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the other influential thinkers of the era, the main features of Kant’s thought – when they were highly influential – became more often a target of criticism than a model to be followed. For decades even after World War II, Kantianism was eclipsed in many circles by movements such as critical theory, existentialism, philosophy of language, hermeneu- tics, structuralism, and revivals of later idealist approaches. In the Continental tradition in general (in contrast, still, with much work in the analytic tradition), Kant’s ethics is not treated in isolation but tends to 2 There are, of course, exceptions. In addition to the authors in this volume, see, for example, Hermann Krings, System und Freiheit: Gesammelte Aufsätze (Freiburg, 1980) and, more recently, the series of “cooperative commentaries” on Kant’s main works in practical philosophy, ed. by O. Höffe: Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (Frankfurt, 1989); Zum Ewigen Frieden (Berlin, 1995); Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Rechtslehre (Berlin, 1999); and Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (Berlin, 2002). 3 Matters got worse later on. One of the Nazis’ first decisions in power was to eliminate the state of Prussia. This act, combined with the Cold War and the situation of “Kaliningrad” (Kant’s renamed birthplace in an isolated part of present-day Russia), has left Kant with- out even a German chamber of commerce that can provide him with the usual local insti- tutions for preserving the memory of a first-rank historical figure. 4 Leonard Nelson, Critique of Practical Reason (Scarsdale, NY, 1957); Julius Ebbinghaus, Gesammelte Aufsätze, Vorträge, und Reden (Darmstadt, 1956); Gerhard Krüger, Philosophie und Moral in der kantischen Ethik (Tübingen, 1931, 2nd ed. 1969); Hans Reiner, Duty and Inclination: The Fundamentals of Morality Discussed and Redefined with Special Regard to Kant and Schiller (Hingham, MA, 1983). (If a German book has an English translation, the translated edition is the one listed in this Introduction.) © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-89871-3 - Kant’s Moral and Legal Philosophy Edited by Karl Ameriks and Otfried Hoffe Excerpt More information INTRODUCTION 3 be approached from the outset as a component of his Critical Philosophy as a whole and as a culmination of the mainstream of modern philosophy after Descartes. Although leading exponents of this tradition take note of Kant’s idea that there is a “primacy of the practical,” they are sensitive to the way in which Kant’s ethics remains embedded in a very complex epistemological and metaphysical system. They also stress the fact that Kant’s views arise in a historical context that involves an appropriation of ideas from earlier view- points such as stoicism, rationalism, pietism, the Newtonian revolution, and the Rousseauian enlightenment. All this understanding of the background of Kant’s position does not necessarily lead, however, to a widespread advo- cacy of it; on the contrary, its entanglements with the philosophical tradition have often been a cause of its rejection. For a long time, Continental philos- ophy was dominated by figures who were sharply critical of Kant precisely to the extent that his work appeared to epitomize the character of earlier modern philosophy in general. These figures approached Kant’s systematic views through the lens of their own allegiance to one of the main schools that followed in the wake of the Critical Philosophy and that aimed at revers- ing the overall trajectory of the modern “Cartesian” approach. Followers of Hegel, Romanticism, Marx, Nietzsche, phenomenology, and pragmatism all became well-known for their outright rejection of many of the general features most commonly associated with Kant’s thought such as formalism, rigorism, and anti- naturalism. The common presumption of these followers was that Kant’s own ethical position – that we should will only in accordance with maxims whose form is consistent with “pure” practical rationality – was so clearly wrong-headed that the only question remaining was exactly what kind of “material” alternative should be developed in opposition to it. For this reason, not only Nietzsche and Heidegger, but also such diverse leading thinkers as Max Scheler, Nicolai Hartmann, Theodor Adorno, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Jürgen Habermas all argued vigorously that a fundamentally new starting point was needed in practical philosophy, one that would over- come what they took to be severe limitations in Kant’s own moral theory. In more recent German philosophy, as throughout philosophy in the rest of the world, anti-Kantian tendencies have remained popular, flour- ishing in a variety of guises such as broadly Aristotelian virtue theory, broadly Humean “quasi-realism,” and broadly Nietzshean “anti-theory” approaches.5 At the same time, however, a steady stream of significant 5 See, for example, Ernst Tugendhat, Vorlesungen über Ethik (Frankfurt, 1993); Ursula Wolf, Die Philosophie und die Frage nach dem guten Leben (Hamburg, 1999); Rüdiger Bittner, Doing Things for Reasons (Oxford, 2001). © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-89871-3 - Kant’s Moral and Legal Philosophy Edited by Karl Ameriks and Otfried Hoffe Excerpt More information 4 KARL AMERIKS AND OTFRIED HÖFFE new Kant scholarship has been produced by contemporary German philosophers who appreciate the systematic and stylistic advances of analytic approaches even as they manifest the historical and interpretive skills that are distinctive of the Continental tradition. While maintaining a broadly sympathetic attitude toward much of the Critical Philosophy, the scholars of this era have focused on developing extremely careful interpretations of Kant’s arguments in a way that does not shrink from offering significant criticisms of his theory. Instead of trying to resurrect a unified “neo-Kantian” school, or orienting themselves in terms of a traditional post-Kantian movement, they have concentrated on particu- lars and on the fact that many of the crucial elements of the background and logical structure of Kant’s main arguments still deserve much closer analysis.6 In addition, German scholars have made significant progress recently in publishing new material concerning lectures by Kant on eth- ics, law, and anthropology.7 This development is especially relevant for practical philosophy in general now that leading Anglophone ethicists have also placed a new emphasis on understanding contemporary argu- ments against the background of little-known details in the development of modern ethical thought.8 The continuing relevance of Kant’s work, and hence of the latest German scholarship on it, thus rests on a wide variety of tendencies. Philosophers who are oriented toward close conceptual analysis, or at least to the challenge of a rigorous system that aims to parallel the achievement of modern science, cannot help but be intrigued by Kant’s classical texts – their striking innovations as well as their bold architec- tonic.
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