Kant and the Limits of Autonomy

by Shell, Susan Meld

• ISBN13: 9780674033337
• ISBN10: 0674033337
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-04-30
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

Autonomy for Kant is not just a synonym for the capacity to choose, whether simple or deliberative. It is what the word literally implies: the imposition of a law on oners"s own authority and out of oners"s own rational resources. In Kant and the Limits of Autonomy, Shell explores the limits of Kantian autonomy-both the force of its claims and the complications to which they give rise. Through a careful examination of major and minor works, Shell argues for the importance of attending to the difficulty inherent in autonomy and to the related resistance that in Kantrs"s view autonomy necessarily provokes in us. Such attention yields new access to Kantrs"s famous, and famously puzzling, Groundlaying of the Metaphysics of Morals. It also provides for a richer and more unified account of Kantrs"s later political and moral works; and it highlights the pertinence of some significant but neglected early writings, including the recently published Lectures on Anthropology.Kant and the Limits of Autonomy is both a rigorous, philosophically and historically informed study of Kantian autonomy and an extended meditation on the foundation and limits of modern liberalism.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Taking Autonomy Seriously

Getting There "Carazan's Dream": Kant's Early Theory of Freedom Kant's

Archimedean Moment: Remarks in "Observation Concerning the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime"

Rousseau, Count Verri, and the "True Economy of Human Nature": Lectures on Anthropology, 1772-1781

The "Paradox" of Autonomy

Complications on Arrival

Introduction to Part Two: Late Kant: 1789-1798

Moral Hesitation in Religion within the Boundaries of Bare Reason Kant's

"True Politics": Volkerrecht in Toward Perpetual Peace and The Metaphysics of Morals

Kant as Educator: Conflict of the Faculties

Part One Archimedes Revisited: Honor and History in The Conflict of the Faculties

Part Two Kant's Jewish Problem

Conclusion

Notes

Index

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