By reconsidering Kleist's reception of Rousseau and placing it in historical context, this book sheds new light on a range of political and ethical issues at play in Kleist's work. Heinrich von Kleist is renowned as an author who posed a radical challenge to the orthodoxies of his age. Today, his works are frequently seen to relentlessly deconstruct the paradigms of Idealism and to reflect a Romantic, even postmodern, perspective on the ambiguities of the world. Such a view fails, however, to do full justice to the more complex manner in which Kleist articulates the tensions between the securities of Enlightenment thought and the anxieties of the revolutionary age. Steven Howe offers a new angle on Kleist's dialogue with the Enlightenment by reconsidering his investment in the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Where previous critics have trivialized this as intense but fleeting and born of personal identification, Howe here establishes Rousseau's importance as a lasting source of inspiration for the violent constellations of Kleist's fiction. Taking account of both Rousseau'scritique of modernity and his later propositions for working toward the Enlightenment promise of emancipation, the book locates a mode of discourse which, placed in the historical context of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, sheds new light on the political and ethical issues at play in Kleist's work. Steven Howe is Associate Research Fellow at the University of Exeter, UK. He is co-editor, with Ricarda Schmidt and Sean Allan, of Heinrich von Kleist: Konstruktive und Destruktive Funktionen von Gewalt (forthcoming, 2012).

Philosophy Bites Back is the second book to come out of the hugely successful podcast Philosophy Bites. It presents a selection of lively interviews with leading philosophers of our time, who discuss the ideas and works of some of the most important thinkers in history. From the ancient classics of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, to the groundbreaking modern thought of Wittgenstein, Rawls, and Derrida, this volume spans over two and a half millennia of western philosophy and illuminates its most fascinating ideas. Philosophy Bites was set up in 2007 by David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton. It has had over 12 million downloads, and is listened to all over the world.

How is Nature Possible?: Kants Project in the First Critique presents a clear and systematic appraisal of what is perhaps the most difficult treatise in the philosophical canon. Daniel N. Robinson situates Kants undertaking in the First Critique within the context of the history of philosophy and as a response to the challenges of scepticism. Kants central task in the First Critique is to tie his metaphysical analysis to the very possibility of nature itself. Where others assumed the validity or the weakness of perception and reason, Kant presents a critical appraisal of both, thereby establishing the very limits of sense and reason as instruments of discovery. Ideal for students at all levels, this fascinating introduction clarifies the aims and significance of Kants project, locates its place within the history of philosophy and identifies the strengths and weaknesses reasonably attributed to this most significant contribution to the history of philosophical reflection.

An unabridged edition of Second Treatise of Government (An Essay Concerning the True Original Extent and End of Civil Government) with the original nineteen chapters and 243 sections with footnotes and preface by the author

"Rationality and Feminist Philosophy" argues that the Enlightenment conception of rationality that feminists are fond of attacking is no longer a live concept. Deborah K. Heikes shows how contemporary theories of rationality are consonant with many feminist concerns and proposes that feminists need a substantive theory of rationality, which she argues should be a virtue theory of rationality.
Within both feminist and non-feminist philosophical circles, our understanding of rationality depends upon the concept's history. Heikes traces the development of theories of rationality from Descartes through to the present day, examining the work of representative philosophers of the Enlightenment and twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She discusses feminist concerns with rationality as understood by each philosopher discussed and also focuses on the deeper problems that lie outside specifically feminist issues. She goes on to consider how each conception of rationality serves to ground the broadly conceived feminist philosophical goals of asserting the reality and injustice of oppression. She ultimately concludes that a virtue rationality may serve feminist needs well, without the accompanying baggage of Enlightenment rationality.

Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) was one of the most notorious and pious of Rene Descartes' philosophical followers. A member of The Oratory, a Roman Catholic order founded in 1611 to increase devotion to the Church and St. Augustine, Malebranche brought together his Cartesianism and his Augustinianism in a rigorous theological-philosophical system.Malebranche's occasionalist metaphysics asserts that God alone possesses true causal power. He asserts that human understanding is totally passive and relies on God for both sensory and intellectual perceptions. Critics have wondered what exactly his system leaves for humans to do. Yet leaving a space for true human intellectual and moral freedom is something Malebranche clearly intended. This book offers a detailed evaluation of Malebranche's efforts to provide a plausible account of human intellectual and moral agency in the context of his commitment to an infinitely perfect being possessing all causal power. Peppers-Bates suggests that Malebranche might offer a model of agent-willing useful for contemporary theorists.

Blindness and Enlightenment presents a reading and a new translation of Diderot's Letter on the Blind. Diderot was the editor of the Encyclopedie, that Trojan horse of Enlightenment ideas, as well as a novelist, playwright, art critic and philosopher. His Letter on the Blind of 1749 is essential reading for anyone interested in Enlightenment philosophy or eighteenth-century literature because it contradicts a central assumption of Western literature and philosophy, and of the Enlightenment in particular, namely that moral and philosophical insight is dependent on seeing. Kate Tunstall's essay guides the reader through the Letter, its anecdotes, ideas and its conversational mode of presenting them, and it situates the Letter in relation both to the Encyclopedie and to a rich tradition of writing about and, most importantly, talking and listening to the blind.>

2011 Reprint of 1949 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Also known as "The Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals." This is Kant's first contribution to moral philosophy. It argues for an a priori basis for morality. Where the "Critique of Pure Reason" laid out Kant's metaphysical and epistemological ideas, this relatively short, primarily meta-ethical, work was intended to outline and define the concepts and arguments shaping his future work, "The Metaphysics of Morals." The treatise is broken into a preface, followed by three sections. Kant's argument works from common reason up to the supreme unconditional law, in order to identify its existence. He then works backwards from there to prove the relevance and weight of the moral law. The third and final section of the book is famously obscure, and it is partly because of this that Kant later, in 1788, decided to publish the Critique of Practical Reason.

Salomon Maimon was one of the most important and influential Jewish intellectuals of the Enlightenment. This is the first English translation of his principal work, first published in Berlin in 1790. "Essay on Transcendental Philosophy" presents the first English translation of Salomon Maimon's principal work, originally published in Berlin in 1790. This book expresses his response to the revolution in philosophy wrought by Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason". Kant himself was full of praise for the book and it went on to exercise a decisive influence on the course of post-Kantian German idealism. Yet, despite his importance for the work of such key thinkers as Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, Maimon never achieved the prominence he deserved. Today interest in Maimon's work is increasing rapidly, thanks in large part to prominent acclaim by Gilles Deleuze. This long-overdue translation brings Maimon's seminal text to an English-speaking audience for the first time. The text includes a comprehensive introduction, a glossary, translator's notes and a full bibliography. It also includes translations of correspondence between Maimon and Kant and a letter Maimon wrote to a Berlin journal clarifying the philosophical position of the Essay, all of which bring alive the context of the book's publication for the modern reader.

"SCM Brieflys" introduce texts commonly studied at A level and Level One undergraduate courses in Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies. A comprehensive introductory chapter sets the text and its author in their wider context. The texts are analyzed and summarized in an accessible and yet thorough style that makes "SCM Brieflys" an essential study tool for all who want to engage in more depth with some of the key texts of philosophy, theology and related disciplines. "Kant's Critique of Practical Reason" (1788) is one of his most important works and a key text to understanding Kant's philosophy and the impact it had on later developments of moral philosophy and ethics.

Often called Kant's "first critique," this is a foundational work of modern philosophy, one that attempts to define the very nature of reason, and to join the two schools of thought dominant in the late 18th century: that of Empiricism and Rationalism. At the border between thinking subject to religion and realities as the burgeoning sciences were demonstrating at the time, Kant explores ethics, the limits of human knowledge, logic, deduction, observation, and intuition, and in the process laid the groundwork for the modern intellect. First published in 1781, this is required reading for anyone wishing to be considerd well educated. German metaphysician IMMANUEL KANT (1724-1804) served as a librarian of the Royal Library, a prestigious government position, and as a professor at Knigsberg University. His other works include Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (1764), Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), and Critique of Practical Reason (1788).

Gillian Rose is among the twentieth century's most important social philosophers. In perhaps her most significant work, Hegel Contra Sociology, Rose mounts a forceful defence of Hegelian speculative thought. Demonstrating how, in his criticisms of Kant and Fichte, Hegel supplies a preemptive critique of Weber, Durkheim, and all of the sociological traditions that stem from these "neo-Kantian" thinkers, Rose argues that any attempt to preserve Marxism from a similar critique and any attempt to renew sociology cannot succeed without coming to terms with Hegel's own speculative discourse. With an analysis of Hegel's mature works in light of his early radical writings, this book represents a profound step toward enacting just such a return to the Hegelian.

In Kant's Rational Theology, Allen W. Wood explores Kant's views on the concept of God and on the attempt to demonstrate God's existence. "We cannot have a full or balanced understanding of Kant's thought on religious subjects," he writes, "as long as we fail to take account of his reflections, often exceedingly abstract, obscure, and subtle, concerning the rational origin, content, and status of our concept of a supreme being."

The importance of this aspect of Kantian thought, according to Wood, lies in its originality, in its historical influence, and in the insights it affords into the tradition of rational theology in medieval and modern philosophy. He believes that it also provides a means of understanding Kant's work as a whole and of achieving a proper appreciation of the contents of Kant's moral faith.

The author focuses on Kant's chapter on the ideal or pure reason from the Critique of Pure Reason and also discusses other Kantian writings (especially the Lectures on Philosophical Theology, the Critique of Judgment, and several of Kant's precritical essays) where the topic of rational theology is prominent. A concise recapitulation and critical assessment of Kant's more speculative theses, this book is a complement to Wood's earlier book, Kant's Moral Religion.

The idea that society progresses through stages of development, from savagery to civilization, arose in eighteenth-century Europe. Albert Craig traces how Fukuzawa Yukichi, deeply influenced by the Scottish Enlightenment, "translated" the idea for Japanese society, both enriching and challenging the concept.

Fukuzawa, an official in the Tokugawa government, saw his career collapse when the shogunate ended in 1867. Reinventing himself as a thinker and writer, he made his life work the translation and interpretation of the Western idea of the stages of civilization. He interpreted key Scottish intellectuals-- Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, William Robertson, John Millar; relied on American geographies to help explain how societies progress; and focused on invention as a key to civilization.

By defining the role of "less developed" nations in the world order, Fukuzawa added a new dimension to the stage theory. But by the end of the 1880s, he had come to dismiss the philosophy of natural rights as "the fatuous idealism of Christian ministers." Though civilization--as represented by Britain--was still his goal for Japan, he no longer saw the West as a uniformly beneficial moral force.

This engaging history offers an illuminating look at an important figure and the world of ideas in nineteenth-century Japan.

Philosophy may be said to contain the principles of the rational cognition that concepts afford us of things (not merely, as with logic, the principles of the form of thought in general irrespective of the objects), and, thus interpreted, the course, usually adopted, of dividing it into theoretical and practical is perfectly sound. But this makes imperatgvive a specific distinction on the part of the concepts by which the principles of this rational cognition get their object assigned to them, for if the concepts are not distinct they fail to justify a division, which always presupposes that the principles belonging to the rational cognition of the several parts of the science in question are themselves mutually exclusive.

The Critique of Pure Reason is one of the most influential philosophy books of all times. Kant's influence on modern perception of reason cannot be over estimated. Here Kant redefines reason and gives us the tools to understand reason on two levels: the empirical and the metaphysical.

The Critique of Practical Reason is the second of Immanuel Kant's three critiques and it deals with Kant's own moral philosophy and his views on free will. A masterpiece of philosophical writing. The theoretical use of reason was concerned with objects of the cognitive faculty only, and a critical examination of it with reference to this use applied properly only to the pure faculty of cognition; because this raised the suspicion, which was afterwards confirmed, that it might easily pass beyond its limits, and be lost among unattainable objects, or even contradictory notions. It is quite different with the practical use of reason. In this, reason is concerned with the grounds of determination of the will, which is a faculty either to produce objects corresponding to ideas, or to determine ourselves to the effecting of such objects; that is, to determine our causality. -Immanuel Kant

All duties are either duties of right, that is, juridical duties, or duties of virtue, that is, ethical duties. Juridical duties are such as may be promulgated by external legislation; ethical duties are those for which such legislation is not possible.

Kant's Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals is one of the most important works in modern moral philosophy. It belongs beside Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Hobbes. Here Kant sets out to articulate and defend the Categorical Imperative - the fundamental principle that underlies moral reasoning - and to lay the foundation for a comprehensive account of justice and human virtues.

"The SCM Briefly" series is made up of short, accessible volumes which summarize books by philosophers and theologians, books that are commonly used on theology and philosophy A level (school leaving) and Level One undergraduate courses. Each "Briefly" volume includes line by line analysis and short quotes to give students a feel for the original text. In addition each book begins with a contextualizing introduction about the writer and his writings, and a glossary of terms follows the summary to help students with definitions of philosophical terms.

Briefly: Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals is a summarized version of Immanual Kant's original treatsie, which is designed to assist university and sixth-form students in acquiring knowledge and understanding of this key text. Based on, and page referenced to, Mary Gregor's edition of the Groundwork, CUP an important feature of the book is its close adherence to Kant's text, enabling the reader to follow each development in the argument as it occurs. It will be of particular value in helping students to revise for university examinations in Philosophy and Theology and for A-level examinations in Religious Studies. The introduction contains a brief biography of Kant, examines and assesses the importance of the main issues covered by his Groundwork, and indicates where they are to be found in the text. There is a comprehensive glossary of terms.

The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.

In this book Julian Wuerth offers a radically new interpretation of Kant's theories of mind, action, and ethics. As the author of a Copernican revolution in philosophy, Kant grounded his philosophy in his positive theory of the mind, which remains an enigma two centuries later. Wuerth's original interpretation of Kant's theory of mind consults a far wider range of Kant's recorded thought than previous interpretations, revealing a fascinating evolution in Kant's thought in the decades before and after his 1781 Critique. Starting in the 1760s, Kant recognized the unique status of our epistemic contact to ourselves. This is the sole instance of our immediate epistemic contact with a substance, of being a substance, and it is the sole instance of epistemic contact with something other than the particular states of inner sense. Contrary to empiricists, Kant thus rejects the reduction of the self to a bundle of mental states of inner sense. But Kant also rejects the rational psychologists' assumption that the souls substantiality and simplicity implies its permanence, incorruptibility, and immortality. As Kant developed his transcendental idealism, he eventually pinpointed the source of their errors, a source neither unique to a particular, historical school, nor random. It is instead a deep, natural, and timeless transcendental confusion. Kants new account of substance allows him to draw new distinctions in kind between sensibility and understanding and between phenomenal and noumenal substance, setting the stage for a transcendental argument that only at the phenomenal level do substantiality and simplicity imply permanence and incorruptibility. Wuerth next undertakes a groundbreaking study of Kant's theory of action and ethics. He first maps Kant's notoriously vast and complex system of the minds powers, drawing on all of Kant's recorded thought. This system structures Kant's philosophy as a whole and so provides crucial insights into this whole and its parts, including Kant's theory of action, a persisting stumbling block for interpreters of Kant's ethics. Wuerth demonstrates that Kant rejects intellectualist theories of action that reduce practical agents to pure reason. We are instead irreducibly both intellectual and sensible, exercising a power of choice, or Willkur, subject to two irreducible conative currencies, moral motives and sensible incentives, as Kant makes clear long before his 1785 Groundwork. Immoral choices at odds with the former can thus nonetheless be coherent choices in harmony with the latter. Wuerth applies these new findings about Kant's theory of mind and action to an analysis of the foundations of Kant's ethics. He rejects the dominant constructivist interpretation in favor of a moral realist one. At the heart of Kant's Enlightenment ethics is his insistence that the authority of the moral law ultimately rests in our recognition of its authority. Kant guides us to this recognition of the authority of the moral law, across his works in ethics and his various formulations of the moral law, using a single elimination of sensibility procedure. Here Kant systematically rejects the pretenses of sensibility to isolate reason and its insights into moral right and wrong. Precisely because immoral choice remains a coherent alternative, however, moral virtue demands our ongoing cultivation of our capacities for cognition, feeling, desire, and character.