The Invention of Autonomy
A History of Modern Moral Philosophy

Study of the history of moral philosophy which puts Kant's ethics into historical context.

Jerome B. Schneewind (Author)

9780521479387, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 13 December 1997

650 pages
22.9 x 15 x 4.1 cm, 0.98 kg

"The book is in part appropriate for upper-level undergraduate courses concerned with the history of ethics and practical philosophy, including aspects of political philosophy....scholars will find it to offer a strong antidote to anachronistic interpretation from the limited perspective of twentieth century ethics. Schneewind's scholarship is uniformly of the very highest caliber. Schneewind shows what can be done by someone with complete command over the currents of an entire epoch." Review of Metaphysics

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.

Preface
Acknowledgements
A note on references and abbreviations
Introduction
1. Themes in the history of modern moral philosophy
Part I. The Rise and Fall of Modern Natural Law: 2. Natural law: from intellectualism to voluntarism
3. Setting religion aside: republicanism and skepticism
4. Natural law restated: Suarez and Grotius
5. Grotianism at the limit: Hobbes
6. A morality of love: Cumberland
7. The central synthesis: Pufendorf
8. The collapse of modern natural law: Locke and Thomasius
Part II. Perfectionism and Rationality: 9. Origins of modern perfectionism
10. Paths to God: I. The Cambridge Platonists
11. Paths to God: II. Spinoza and Malebranche
12. Leibniz: Counterrevolutionary perfectionism
Part III. Toward a World on its Own: 13. Morality without salvation
14. The recovery of virtue
15. The austerity of morals: Clarke and Mandeville
16. The limits of love: Hutcheson and Butler
17. Hume: virtue naturalized
18. Against a fatherless world
19. The noble effects of self-love
Part IV. Autonomy and Divine Order: 20. Perfection and will: Wolff and Crusius
21. Religion, morality, and reform
22. The invention of autonomy
23. Kant in the history of moral philosophy
Epilogue: 24. Pythagoras, Socrates, and Kant: understanding the history of moral philosophy
Bibliography
Index of names
Index of subjects
Index of biblical citations.

Subject Areas: Ethics & moral philosophy [HPQ]