The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy

by Jerome B. Schneewind

• ISBN13: 9780521479387
• ISBN10: 052147938X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-12-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This remarkable book is the most comprehensive study ever written of the history of moral philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its aim is to set Kant's still influential ethics in its historical context by showing in detail what the central questions in moral philosophy were for him and how he arrived at his own distinctive ethical views. The book is organised into four main sections, each exploring moral philosophy by discussing the work of many influential philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In an epilogue the author discusses Kant's view of his own historicity, and of the aims of moral philosophy. In its range, in its analyses of many philosophers not discussed elsewhere, and in revealing the subtle interweaving of religious and political thought with moral philosophy, this is an unprecedented account of the evolution of Kant's ethics.

Table of Contents

Preface	xiii
Acknowledgments	xvii
A note on references and abbreviations	xxi
Introduction	1	(2)
Themes in the history of modern moral philosophy	3	(12)
Moral philosophy and social change	4	(1)
Morality and self-governance	5	(1)
Morality and religion	6	(3)
Morality, epistemology, and moral psychology	9	(2)
A map of the book	11	(4)
Part I The rise and fall of modern natural law	15	(152)
Natural law: From intellectualism to voluntarism	17	(20)
Origins of natural law theory	17	(2)
St. Thomas's natural law morality	19	(2)
Will and the good in voluntarism	21	(5)
Luther's two kingdoms	26	(1)
Luther's voluntarism	27	(5)
Calvin's humanistic voluntarism	32	(5)
Setting religion aside: Republicanism and skepticism	37	(21)
Virtu and the manipulative prince	37	(2)
The self-governing republic	39	(3)
Pyrrhonism rediscovered	42	(2)
Montaigne: Skepticism and faith	44	(3)
Montaigne's test	47	(3)
A Montaignian ethic?	50	(2)
Charron: Eclectic skepticism	52	(4)
War and morality	56	(2)
Natural law restated: Suarez and Grotius	58	(24)
Suarez: Will and intellect in law	59	(3)
Suarez: The law and its promulgation	62	(2)
Suarez: Motives for obedience	64	(2)
Grotius and religious belief	66	(4)
The Grotian problematic	70	(3)
``Even if we should concede ...''	73	(2)
The insufficiency of virtue	75	(3)
Rights and community	78	(4)
Grotianism at the limit: Hobbes	82	(19)
Desire and conflict	82	(6)
From psychology to morality	88	(4)
Morality in practice	92	(3)
Hobbesian voluntarism	95	(6)
A morality of love: Cumberland	101	(17)
Love as law	102	(2)
The status of the law of love	104	(3)
From self-love to benevolence	107	(2)
God, law, and obligation	109	(4)
Rationality in morality	113	(3)
Ignorance and obedience	116	(2)
The central synthesis: Pufendorf	118	(23)
Moral entities	119	(4)
Moral good and natural good	123	(3)
Knowledge of natural law	126	(5)
Perfect and imperfect duty	131	(3)
Law and obligation	134	(4)
The significance of Pufendorf's voluntarism	138	(3)
The collapse of modern natural law: Locke and Thomasius	141	(26)
Locke and the Grotian problematic	142	(2)
Elements of a science of morality	144	(3)
Morality as a science	147	(2)
Locke's voluntarism	149	(3)
Revelation and reason in morals	152	(1)
Locke's early work on natural law	153	(3)
Justice and love	156	(1)
Voluntarism and empiricist morality	157	(2)
Thomasius: The rejection of voluntarism	159	(2)
Obligation and advice	161	(2)
Separating law and morality	163	(4)
Part II Perfectionism and rationality	167	(94)
Origins of modern perfectionism	169	(25)
Stoicism Christianized: du Vair and Lipsius	170	(6)
Herbert of Cherbury: Cosmos and Common Notions	176	(3)
Herbert: Common Notions, morality, and religion	179	(5)
Cartesian voluntarism	184	(1)
Descartes: Ignorance and virtue	185	(4)
Descartes: Happiness, the passions, and love	189	(5)
Paths to God: I. The Cambridge Platonists	194	(21)
Whichcote: Morality as the core of religion	196	(3)
John Smith: Perfection, love, and law	199	(3)
More: Love's axioms	202	(3)
Cudworth: A metaphysics of ethics	205	(5)
Cambridge Platonism and free will	210	(5)
Paths to God: II. Spinoza and Malebranche	215	(21)
Spinoza: Ethics in a world without ends	216	(4)
Wisdom and the good life	220	(3)
Spinozistic society	223	(2)
Malebranche: Evil and God's general wills	225	(3)
Order, virtue, and happiness	228	(3)
Acquiring merit	231	(2)
Malebranchean morality	233	(3)
Leibniz: Counterrevolutionary perfectionism	236	(25)
The best possible world	237	(4)
Freedom and determination by reasons	241	(5)
Love, justice, and perfection	246	(4)
Against Pufendorf: Law and will	250	(4)
Against Pufendorf: Justification and motive	254	(7)
Part III Toward a world on its own	261	(168)
Morality without salvation	263	(22)
Gassendi's rehabilitation of Epicureanism	264	(5)
Free will and the incomprehensibility of God	269	(3)
Morality and the hidden God	272	(3)
Nicole: The ingenuity of self-interest	275	(4)
Bayle: Religion and the virtuous atheist	279	(6)
The recovery of virtue	285	(25)
Virtue and law	286	(3)
Virtue in Utopia	289	(4)
Harrington's hollow citizen	293	(2)
Shaftesbury's politics	295	(3)
The diversity of the passions	298	(2)
Moral feeling, voluntarism, and skepticism	300	(6)
Virtue, happiness, and the complete citizen	306	(4)
The austerity of morals: Clarke and Mandeville	310	(20)
Free will and reasons for action	311	(3)
Mathematical morality	314	(3)
Morality and rational agency	317	(2)
Morality in the best possible world	319	(2)
Morality and the need for Christianity	321	(2)
Mandeville: Morality naturalized	323	(4)
Morality against nature	327	(3)
The limits of love: Hutcheson and Butler	330	(24)
Carmichael: Pufendorf in Scotland	331	(2)
Hutcheson's morality of benevolence	333	(3)
Morality and sentiment	336	(4)
Reason, motive, and calculation	340	(2)
Butler: The complexity of human nature	342	(3)
Conscience	345	(4)
Self-love, benevolence, and morality	349	(3)
God and morality	352	(2)
Hume: Virtue naturalized	354	(24)
Moral philosophy as a science of sentiment	355	(3)
Desire, belief, and action	358	(4)
Laws of approval	362	(3)
Artificial and natural virtues	365	(4)
Obligation	369	(3)
Hume and the classical republic	372	(1)
Morality and religion	373	(5)
Against a fatherless world	378	(26)
Sentimentalism, skepticism, and the new rationalism	378	(2)
Price's intuitionism	380	(5)
Intuition and motivation	385	(2)
Morality and providential care	387	(1)
Adam Smith: Sentimentalism restated	388	(5)
Moral philosophy dissolved	393	(2)
Reid: The active powers	395	(2)
Defending the obvious: The intuitive axioms	397	(2)
Freedom and morality	399	(3)
Reid's legacy	402	(2)
The noble effects of self-love	404	(25)
Association and utility	405	(3)
God and the greatest happiness	408	(5)
Egoism and reform: Helvetius and d'Holbach	413	(6)
Bentham: Making morality in a world on its own	419	(5)
De Sade: Self-love in a corrupt society	424	(5)
Part IV Autonomy and divine order	429	(126)
Perfection and will: Wolff and Crusius	431	(26)
Wolff: The need for system	432	(3)
Wolffian psychology	435	(3)
Wolffian ethics	438	(4)
A note on Pietism	442	(3)
Crusius: The significance of free will	445	(4)
Freedom and virtue	449	(3)
Morality and God's will	452	(5)
Religion, morality, and reform	457	(26)
Voltaire and voluntarism	458	(4)
La Mettrie: Atheism let loose	462	(4)
Diderot: Morality without theory	466	(4)
Rousseau: The origins of morality	470	(4)
The transformation of human nature	474	(4)
Toward the classical republic	478	(2)
Providence without intervention	480	(3)
The invention of autonomy	483	(25)
Toward the moral law	484	(3)
On Rousseau's influence	487	(5)
Theodicy and morality	492	(5)
Theodicy and freedom	497	(4)
Reason and sentiment	501	(4)
Morality and the two worlds	505	(3)
Kant in the history of moral philosophy	508	(25)
Equality with God	509	(4)
From self-governance to autonomy	513	(2)
Will and desire	515	(3)
Natural law, obligation, and moral necessity	518	(4)
Methods of ethics	522	(3)
Virtue, love, and perfection	525	(6)
Epilogue	531	(2)
Pythagoras, Socrates, and Kant: Understanding the history of moral philosophy	533	(22)
The Socrates story	534	(2)
The Pythagoras story	536	(4)
Revelation and reason	540	(3)
Kant and the Pythagoras story	543	(5)
Has moral philosophy a single aim?	548	(2)
Continuity and change in moral philosophy	550	(3)
Progress in moral philosophy	553	(2)
Bibliography	555	(38)
1 Sources	555	(13)
2 Commentary	568	(25)
Index of names	593	(19)
Index of subjects	612	(12)
Index of biblical citations	624