What makes us human beings? Is it merely some corporeal aspect, or rather some specific mental capacity, language, or some form of moral agency or social life? Is there a gendered bias within the concept of humanity? How do human beings become more human, and can we somehow cease to be human? This volume provides some answers to these fundamental questions and more by charting the increased preoccupation of the European Enlightenment with the concepts of humankind and humanity. Chapters investigate the philosophical concerns of major figures across Western Europe, including Montesquieu, Diderot, Rousseau, Locke, Hume, Ferguson, Kant, Herder, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach and the Comte de Buffon. As these philosophers develop important descriptive and comparative approaches to the human species and moral and social ideals of humanity, they present a view of the Enlightenment project as a particular kind of humanism that is different from its Ancient and Renaissance predecessors. With contributions from a team of internationally recognized scholars, including Stephen Gaukroger, Michael Forster, Céline Spector, Jacqueline Taylor, and Günter Zöller, this book offers a novel interpretation of the Enlightenment that is both clear in focus and impressive in scope.

Kant writes at one point in the Critique of Pure Reason that practical freedom can be recognized "through experience, as one of the natural causes" (B 831). This claim appears to conflict with a central epistemological theme of his critical philosophy. This work responds by carefully tracing the details of the relationship between transcendental and practical freedom through all of Kant's writings (published works, lecture notes, etc.). Kant uses the term "practical freedom" in several quite different senses and draws on pre-critical theses to varying degrees. While the problematic text has long been noted, there has been no detailed study of its importance.

From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, new anatomical investigations of the brain and the nervous system, together with a renewed interest in comparative anatomy, allowed doctors and philosophers to ground their theories on sense perception, the emergence of human intelligence, and the soul/body relationship in modern science. They investigated the anatomical structures and the physiological processes underlying the rise, differentiation, and articulation of human cognitive activities, and looked for the "anatomical roots" of the specificity of human intelligence when compared to other forms of animal sensibility. This edited volume focuses on medical and philosophical debates on human intelligence and animal perception in the early modern age, providing fresh insights into the influence of medical discourse on the rise of modern philosophical anthropology. Contributions from distinguished historians of philosophy and medicine focus on sixteenth-century zoological, psychological, and embryological discourses on man; the impact of mechanism and comparative anatomy on philosophical conceptions of body and soul; and the key status of sensibility in the medical and philosophical enlightenment.

When, in 1735, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten added a new discipline to the philosophical system, he not only founded modern aesthetics but also contributed to shaping the modern concept of art or 'fine art'. In The Founding of Aesthetics in the German Enlightenment, Stefanie Buchenau offers a rich analysis and reconstruction of the origins of this new discipline in its wider context of German Enlightenment philosophy. Present-day scholars commonly regard Baumgarten's views as an imperfect prefiguration of Kantian and post-Kantian aesthetics, but Buchenau argues that Baumgarten defended a consistent and original project which must be viewed in the context of the modern debate on the art of invention. Her book offers new perspectives on Kantian aesthetics and beauty in art and science.

When, in 1735, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten added a new discipline to the philosophical system, he not only founded modern aesthetics but also contributed to shaping the modern concept of art or 'fine art'. In The Founding of Aesthetics in the German Enlightenment, Stefanie Buchenau offers a rich analysis and reconstruction of the origins of this new discipline in its wider context of German Enlightenment philosophy. Present-day scholars commonly regard Baumgarten's views as an imperfect prefiguration of Kantian and post-Kantian aesthetics, but Buchenau argues that Baumgarten defended a consistent and original project which must be viewed in the context of the modern debate on the art of invention. Her book offers new perspectives on Kantian aesthetics and beauty in art and science.