Kant's Observations of 1764 and Remarks of 1764 1765 (a set of fragments written in the margins of his copy of the Observations) document a crucial turning point in his life and thought. Both reveal the growing importance for him of ethics, anthropology and politics, but with an important difference. The Observations attempts to observe human nature directly. The Remarks, by contrast, reveals a revolution in Kant's thinking, largely inspired by Rousseau, who 'turned him around' by disclosing to Kant the idea of a 'state of freedom' (modelled on the state of nature) as a touchstone for his thinking. This and related thoughts anticipate such famous later doctrines as the categorical imperative. This collection of essays by leading Kant scholars illuminates the many and varied topics within these two rich works, including the emerging relations between theory and practice, ethics and anthropology, men and women, philosophy, history and the 'rights of man'.

In "Being after Rousseau, " Richard L. Velkley presents Jean-Jacques Rousseau as the founder of a modern European tradition of reflection on the relation of philosophy to culture--a reflection that calls both into question. Tracing this tradition from Rousseau to Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schelling, and Martin Heidegger, Velkley shows late modern philosophy as a series of ultimately unsuccessful attempts to resolve the dichotomies between nature and society, culture and civilization, and philosophy and society that Rousseau brought to the fore.
The Rousseauian tradition begins, for Velkley, with Rousseau's criticism of modern political philosophy. Although the German Idealists such as Schelling accepted much of Rousseau's critique, they believed, unlike Rousseau, that human wholeness could be attained at the level of society and history. Heidegger and Nietzsche questioned this claim, but followed both Rousseau and the Idealists in their vision of the philosopher-poet striving to recover an original wholeness that the history of reason has distorted.

Kant's Observations of 1764 and Remarks of 1764 1765 (a set of fragments written in the margins of his copy of the Observations) document a crucial turning point in his life and thought. Both reveal the growing importance for him of ethics, anthropology and politics, but with an important difference. The Observations attempts to observe human nature directly. The Remarks, by contrast, reveals a revolution in Kant's thinking, largely inspired by Rousseau, who 'turned him around' by disclosing to Kant the idea of a 'state of freedom' (modelled on the state of nature) as a touchstone for his thinking. This and related thoughts anticipate such famous later doctrines as the categorical imperative. This collection of essays by leading Kant scholars illuminates the many and varied topics within these two rich works, including the emerging relations between theory and practice, ethics and anthropology, men and women, philosophy, history and the 'rights of man'."

In the Western tradition, freedom and the human person have been at the center of philosophical, theological, moral, and political debates since the origins of this tradition. Although contemporary discourse betrays the multiplicity of these roots, the necessary historical perspective for evaluating them is almost always lacking, even in scholarly studies. The terms ""freedom"" and ""person"" carry such overwhelming force in the modern world that the critical distance required for grasping what is at stake in using them is extremely hard to gain. The present collection seeks to contribute toward finding that distance by making the tradition of thought more a living reality and not an object of arid analyses. Unlike most collections the present one transcends disciplinary boundaries, as it acknowledges the interconnectedness of philosophical, theological, and political arguments on these themes. The contributors are prominent authorities in particular historical periods or in figures in Western thought, and they treat approaches to freedom and the human person in ancient Greek, biblical, medieval and modern sources, although the major emphasis is on the thought of leading philosophers (Plato, Boethius, Aquinas, Ockham, Machiavelli, Locke, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, et al.). Their essays bring forward profound contrasts in how freedom and personhood have been grounded and characterized, notably the contrasts between groundings in natural reason and in supernatural revelation, between premodern teleological thinking and modern thinking on self-sovereignty without teleology, and within modern thought between positions favoring individual autonomy and others securing freedom and its exercise in communal or traditional life. Several of the papers shed light on the relations of freedom and personhood to the human powers of speech, thought, and judgment. The contributors to the volume are Seth Benardete, Michael Gillespie, Leon Kass, Robert B. Pippin, Robert Rethy, John M. Rist, Brian J. Shanley, O. P., Susan Meld Shell, Robert Sokolowski, Eleonore Stump, Nathan Tarcov, and Michael P. Zuckert (with Jesse Covington and James Thompson).