Kantstudien-Ergänzungshefte

Der Band enthält kommentierende Aufsätze zum gesamten Text von Kants Schrift „Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis“ (1793) sowie zu deren Rezeption. In dieser kleinen Schrift verteidigt Kant nicht nur seine Moralphilosophie gegen Einwände seiner Zeitgenossen, sondern publiziert auch seinen ersten Text zur Rechtstheorie. Ihr kommt damit eine besondere Stellung für ein angemessenes Verständnis sowohl des Gehalts als auch der Entwicklung von Kants Überlegungen zu Moral und Recht zu. Die Beiträge kommentieren Kants Überlegungen vor dem Hintergrund zeitgenössischer Diskussionen und präsentieren ihren sachlichen Gehalt unter Berücksichtigung der anderen kritischen Schriften Kants. Da der Gemeinspruch-Aufsatz nach seinem Erscheinen zudem der Ausgangspunkt für weitere kritische Diskussionen um das Verhältnis ‚Theorie und Praxis‘, besonders von Rechtstheorie und politischem Handeln, war, thematisieren zwei weitere Aufsätze die Reaktionen von Friedrich Gentz und August Wilhelm Rehberg. Damit schließt der Band eine Lücke in der Kant-Interpretation und rückt einen Text in den Fokus, der in einzigartiger Weise wesentliche Hinweise für eine angemessene Einschätzung von Kants Moral-, Rechts- und Geschichtsphilosophie bereithält.

Im vorliegenden Text wird die Frage untersucht, ob Pflichten gegen sich selbst moralische Relevanz haben oder, so Habermas, nur als pragmatische Pflichten gelten, da sie lediglich das Interesse der Subjekte betreffen. Die Analyse von Kants Pflichten gegen sich selbst verläuft anhand seiner Moralphilosophie sowie einer Rekonstruktion des naturrechtlichen Ursprungs dieser Pflichten und ihrer Verbindung mit den subjektiven Rechten. Zuletzt wird die Aktualität dieser Pflichten für die zeitgenössische Ethik behandelt. Dafür ist die Interpretation von Adorno, der diese Pflichten und Kants Moral als Ausdruck des Widerstandes des Subjektes gegenüber der Gesellschaft liest, wesentlich. Durch Adornos Interpretation erfasst die Autorin die Pflichten gegen sich selbst als Teil der persönlichen Integrität und des Widerstandes gegenüber der von der Gesellschaft erzwungenen Heteronomie. Dadurch erhalten diese Pflichten nicht nur für die Moral, sondern auch für die Politik Relevanz. Einerseits bezeichnen diese Pflichten in Kants Philosophie die grundlegende Tätigkeit des autonomen Subjektes bei der Entstehung von Moral. Andererseits schützen diese Pflichten die Interessen der Subjekte, die nicht immer mit denen der Kollektivität identisch sind.

The marriage law is one of the most notorious theoretical aspects of the Metaphysics of Morals. According to Kant, sexuality has an objectifying tendency that jeopardizes our dignity. To solve this problem, Kant comes up with rational legal marriage, where the partners own each other "in a proprietary manner." This study draws out the precise substance of Kant’s theses, reconstructs their justification, and explores their argumentative context.

In the form of a systematic interpretation, this study strives to show that the religious narration of revelation must ultimately be viewed as a dark metaphysics – as the metaphysics of a still unenlightened ("practical") reason that considers its own ideas to be concrete objects. Moreover, the study reconstructs against the backdrop of Kant's doctrine of the faculties how religious ideas of revelation emerge from pre-philosophical consciousness.

Kant’s Transcendental Semantics is a translation of the most influential monograph on Kant published in Brazil, one that launched the “Semantic School” in a country with a thriving tradition of Kant scholarship. Zeljko Loparic differs from most interpreters of the Critique of Pure Reason in claiming that Kant’s main aim is neither metaphysical nor epistemological nor methodological but semantic in asking for the conditions for meaning and reference of terms in order to justify the possibility of meaningful discourse of different types. Loparic asks how our claims can have any meaning at all, how they relate to actual and possible objects, how our terms can ground scientific problem-solving, and what the truth-conditions are for various kinds of statements that differ according to the grounds of their meaning and the targets of their reference. Loparic argues for distinct uses for concepts of perception, concepts of experience, mathematical concepts, pure concepts of the understanding (the categories), and the heuristic ideas of reason. Because Kant’s main worry in the Critique of Pure Reason is with the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments, Loparic labels Kant’s defense of those judgments a transcendental semantics.

This volume aims to make a significant contribution to the debate surrounding the renaissance of Kant studies in the last few decades, with a particular emphasis upon some ‘problems of reason’. Like no other, Kant covered the entire breadth of the modern debate concerning the concept of reason and its forms. Accordingly, despite the range of topics this volume inevitably deals with, Immanuel Kant remains the common point of reference for all contributions.

The volume is divided into two sections. The first section is dedicated to Kant’s philosophy in particular and its relationship with the philosophies of Kant’s predecessors. From the perspective of the history of philosophy, interpretations of the significance of different philosophical traditions concerning Kant’s thought will be given, and of the relationship of Kant’s thought to the problems of reason with which Kant and his predecessors dealt. The second section is dedicated to the legacy of Kant’s philosophy. The relevance of the concept of rationality for the genesis and systematics of post-Kantian ideas of rationality will be discussed, and the potential of Kant’s critical philosophy – for contemporary thought as well – will be examined.

This study is the first monograph to explore Kant’s reflections on economics both systematically and in detail. It takes into account legal-philosophical and ethical arguments from Kant’s apriori practical philosophy as well as his empirical anthropological observations and thoughts. The book is targeted at Kant scholars but also at economic philosophers, economists, and intellectual historians.

Die Studie unterscheidet sich durch die Konzentration auf die spezifisch natur- bzw. vernunftrechtlichen Lehrstücke des Strafrechts von entsprechenden Forschungen in den benachbarten Disziplinen wie der Strafrechtsgeschichte oder den Kulturwissenschaften.

Die Untersuchung hat gezeigt, dass die Strafrechtsphilosophie der neuzeitlichen Naturrechtslehre ein Ergebnis einer Anwendung säkularer Prinzipien auf das Problemfeld staatlicher Strafe ist. Behandelt werden die strafrechtstheoretischen Überlegungen von Grotius, Hobbes, Pufendorf, Wolff, Beccaria und Kant im Hinblick auf die Frage nach dem Ursprung bzw. Geltungsgrund der Strafkompetenz und dem Strafzweck (Abschreckung, Besserung oder Vergeltung). Darüber hinaus werden die Gründe der Affinität der Strafrechtstheorie zu deterministischen psychologischen Modellen sowie die Kritik der kriminalpolitischen Aufklärung an der Strafpraxis des Ancien Régime untersucht.

Weil die Naturrechtslehrer im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert in erster Linie an der philosophischen Rechtfertigung der Strafe bzw. der Legitimation der staatlichen Strafgewalt interessiert sind, spielen die soziologischen oder gesellschaftstheoretischen Aspekte der Kriminalität bei ihnen kaum eine Rolle. Die Naturrechtstheoretiker interessieren sich m. a. W. nur für die Geltungsbedingungen des Strafrechts, während die Fragen der Genesis kriminellen Verhaltens weitgehend ignoriert werden. Aber gerade die Konzentration des Blicks auf die spezifisch rechtsphilosophischen Argumetationen eröffnet einen neuen Blick auf die Strafrechtsphilosophie der Aufklärungsepoche.

A religion within the limits of bare reason is, according to Kant, something different from a religion out of mere reason. This raises the question of the status of what is not "derived from bare reason," and the coherence of Kant's moral teaching also becomes questionable.
The present volume explores all of this by examining Kant's treatment of the
"Church Faith" traces and illuminates the theorems developed in religious writing.

Sex, love, and friendship play an integral role in Immanuel Kant’s conception of human life. Against common prejudices, Kant provides substantial contributions to the philosophical discussion of these topics. This unique collection of essays sheds light on how the notions function in Kant’s philosophy, both individually and in conjunction with each other. The essays examine intertwined issues such as theory of sexuality, marriage (including same-sex marriage), morality and sexual objectification, love and autonomy, love of human beings, the conceptual structure of love, friendship, misanthropy, and the highest good. The contributors include internationally well-known experts in the field. They approach the topics diversely from historical, philosophical, critical, and interpretative perspectives. The collection will be an invaluable resource for Kant scholars and for anyone interested in affective social relations in the history of philosophy and beyond.

Is it possible to formulate a principle for the development of humanity? What epistemic status would such a principle have? Can there be a critical philosophy of history? This study situates Kant’s reflections on history by looking at the four systematic questions "What can I know?," "What should I do?," "What am I allowed to hope for?," and "What is the human being?"

Unlike conventional interpretations in the secondary literature on Kant’s philosophy, this book shows that Kantian philosophy’s systematic-teleological unity of reason appears and becomes tangible in the duality of the mathematical and dynamic sublime. This duality thus paradoxically serves the architectural theoretical purpose of the third critique, which is to close the gap between the fields of nature and freedom.

In explicit form, Kant does not speak that much about values or goods. The reason for this is obvious: the concepts of ‘values’ and ‘goods’ are part of the eudaimonistic tradition, and he famously criticizes eudaimonism for its flawed ‘material’ approach to ethics. But he uses, on several occasions, the traditional teleological language of goods and values. Especially in the Groundwork and the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant develops crucial points on this conceptual basis. Furthermore, he implicitly discusses issues of conditional and unconditional values, subjective and objective values, aesthetic or economic values etc. In recent Kant scholarship, there has been a controversy on the question how moral and nonmoral values are related in Kant’s account of human dignity. This leads to the more fundamental problem if Kant should be seen as a prescriptvist (antirealist) or as subscribing to a more objective rational agency account of goods. This issue and several further questions are addressed in this volume.

This volume examines (1) the philosophical sources of the Kantian concepts "apperception" and "self-consciousness", (2) the historical development of the theories of apperception and deduction of categories within the pre-critical period, (3) the structure and content of A- as well as B-deduction of categories, and finally (4) the Kantian (and non-Kantian) meaning of "apperception" and "self-consciousness".

In fünf Kapiteln thematisiert das Buch Kants Ethik im Ganzen, dabei werden die zentralen moralphilosophischen Schriften Kants als Einheit bzw. als eine sukzessive Fortentwicklung hin zu einer ›vollständigeren‹ Ethik aufgefasst, bei der der formale Kern schrittweise durch materiale Momente angereichert und erweitert wird. Erst dadurch ergibt sich ein adäquates Bild der kantischen Ethik. Der Ausdruck »im Ganzen« bezieht sich also zum einen auf die Gesamtheit der in den Blick genommenen Werke und zum anderen auf die ›Komplementarität‹ von formaler und materialer Seite.
Die schrittweise Erweiterung bzw. Anreicherung wird als Anwendung rekonstruiert, nämlich als eine Anwendung des kategorischen Imperativs auf den Menschen in ganz konkreten Zuständen und Umständen, sodass am Ende auch kasuistischen Überlegungen ein angemessener Raum gegeben wird. Dies ist ein Aspekt, der im ›überkommenen‹ Kant-Bild bislang zu wenig Beachtung gefunden hat.
Durch diesen umfassenderen Blick auf Kants Ethik als Ganzes können immer wieder erhobene Einwände bzw. Vorwürfe (wie z. B. Unanwendbarkeit, Formalismus, Gesinnungsethik sowie Rigorismus) entschärft oder auch zurückgewiesen werden.

This book provides readers with a comprehensive understanding of Kant’s teachings on the structure of consciousness and self-consciousness. It uses the contemporary conceptual tools in the textual resources scattered throughout Kant’s opus to develop a multifaceted theory of this topic. This reconstruction allows the volume to shed light on many seemingly insurmountable exegetic ambiguities.

Kant’s academic lectures document his ongoing dispute with Baumgarten regarding the basic structures of action and the meaning of freedom. By systematically comparing the lecture materials with the development of Kantian thought in the published writings, this study casts new light on the historical roots and theoretical aims of Kant’s ethical project.

Lessing and Kant were outstanding figures of the German Enlightenment and they certainly had many opinions in common. This helps to explain why scholars have often overlooked major disagreements between these two thinkers, not least concerning the philosophy of religion. The book addresses this previously neglected theme.

Kant scholarship has largely ignored the contemporary reception of Kant’s Metaphysical Elements of Justice. This edition makes available for the first time a total of 27 contemporary reviews. In addition, the volume includes a bibliography of Kant commentaries and other contemporary sources, plus three essays on the reception of Kant’s philosophy of law around 1800 and the backdrop for this largely neglected area of research.

What is the notion of truth Kant presents in the Critique of Pure Reason and how is the differential determination of the truth of an object possible in the first place? The book applies Kant’s argumentation to show how truth’s sine qua nons inform the epistemological program of self-knowledge of pure reason, in defense against truth-skeptical objections on the part of rationalists and empiricists.

This book presents a comprehensive analysis of Kant’s justification of the categorical imperative. The book contests the standard interpretation of Kant’s views by arguing that he never abandoned his view about this as expressed in his Groundwork. It is distinctive in the way in which it places Kant’s argument in the context of his transcendental philosophy as a whole, which is essential to understand it as an argument from within human agential self-understanding. The book reviews that existing literature, then presents a logical construction of Kant’s argument, which it defends by examining what Kant has to say about synthetic a priori practical propositions in the context of his transcendental philosophy as a whole, and by a detailed examination of how he presents his argument in the Second Critique and the Groundwork. Particular attention is given to the views of two scholars who share many of the views expressed in this book: Klaus Steigleder and Michael Wolff. Special attention is also given to the views of Owen Ware, who, while sharing many of our arguments has a very different overall view. The concluding chapter provides a statement about the validity of Kant’s argument.

This study argues that while respect does not play a motivating role in Kant’s ethics, it does fulfil a systematically necessary function. As a form of feeling, it ensures that human beings are able to develop a distinctive moral consciousness. To this extent, the feeling of respect is epistemologically necessary, even though it is only a side-effect of the rational determination of the will.

This study undertakes a textual analysis of the transcendental dialectic in the Critique of Pure Reason by inquiring about the possibility of a regulative a priori in the framework of the Critique. It takes as its starting point the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic and its connections to the first and second books of the Transcendental Dialectic.

The greatest good is central to Kantian philosophy. Kant understands the greatest good – a world in which all people were both virtuous and happy – as the overarching goal of rational behavior. This study provides, for the first time, an in-depth exploration of the connection between the categorical imperative and the greatest good, offering a new perspective on Kant’s concept of practical rationality.

Ana-Carolina Guriérrez-Xivillé offers a new reading of Kant’s Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals. Whereas older studies read Kantian ethics as the mere elaboration of concepts already developed in the 1760s, this study points to a redefinition of the notion of freedom and provides a new perspective on the relationship between “moral capacity,” “moral sense,” and “moral principle.”

Rationality is largely understood as a distinctive human trait. Thus, Kant’s frequent mentions of “other rational creatures” besides men quickly became a source of bemusement. To whom was he referring? The “lovely angels,” as Schopenhauer smugly remarks? This study seeks to answer this question from the perspective of moral and religious philosophy and in doing so reconstructs Kant’s “moral hierarchy of beings.”

In focusing on the systematic deduction of the categories from a principle, Schulting takes up anew the controversial project of the eminent German Kant scholar Klaus Reich, whose monograph “The Completeness of Kant's Table of Judgments” made the case that the logical functions of judgement can all be derived from the objective unity of apperception and can be shown to link up with one another systematically.

Common opinion among Kantians today has it that Kant did not mean to derive the functions of judgement, and accordingly the categories, from the principle of apperception. Schulting challenges this standard view and aims to resuscitate the main motivation behind Reich’s project. He argues, in agreement with Reich’s main thesis about the derivability of the functions of judgement, that Kant indeed does mean to derive, in full a priori fashion, the categories from the principle of apperception.

Schulting also shows that, given the general assumptions of the Critical philosophy, Kant's derivation is successful and that absent an account of the derivation of the categories from apperception, the B-Deduction cannot really be understood.

New edition. First published 2012 as „Kant’s Deduction and Apperception. Explaining the Categories" (Palgrave Macmillan)

In the third Critique Kant details an aesthetic operation of judgment that is surprising considering how judgment functioned in the first Critique. In this book, I defend an understanding of Kant’s theory of Geschmacksurteil as detailing an operation of the faculties that does not violate the cognitive structure laid out in the first Critique. My orientation is primarily epistemological, elaborating the determinations that govern the activity of pure aesthetic judging that specify it as a "bestimmte" type of judgment without transforming it into "ein bestimmendes Urteil". I focus on identifying how the logical functions from the table of judgments operate in the pure aesthetic judgment of taste to reveal "the moments to which this power of judgment attends in its reflection" (CPJ, 5:203). In the course of doing so, a picture emerges of how the world is not just cognizable in a Kantian framework but also charged with human feeling, acquiring the inexhaustible, inchoate meaningfulness that incites "much thinking" (CPJ, 5:315). The universal communicability of aesthetic pleasure serves as the foundation that grounds robust intersubjective relations, enabling genuine connection to others through a shared a priori feeling.

Immanuel Kant’s ideas are a major reference point for virtually all philosophical theories of human rights. Yet the true import of his practical philosophy for today’s understanding of human rights has often remained unexamined. This is the first collected volume specifically devoted to the relationship between Kant’s practical philosophy and human rights.

This work offers a systematic interpretation of the problematics of disinterest in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. It examines Kant’s thesis that the judgement of taste is free of considerations of morality or utility. Dahan Fan carefully traces Kant’s differentiation between the agreeable, the good, and the beautiful, thus casting the relationship between the interests of reason and aesthetic disinterest in a new light.

The debate between moral realism and antirealism plays an important role in contemporary metaethics as well as in the interpretation of Kant’s moral philosophy. This volume aims to clarify whether, and in what sense, Kant is a moral realist, an antirealist, or something in-between.

Based on an explication of the key metaethical terms, internationally recognized Kant scholars discuss the question of how Kant’s moral philosophy should be understood in this regard. All camps in the metaethical field have their inhabitants: Some contributors read Kant’s philosophy in terms of a more or less robust moral realism, objectivism, or idealism, and some of them take it to be a version of constructivism, constitutionism, or brute antirealism.

In any case, all authors introduce and defend their terminology in a clear manner and argue thoughtfully and refreshingly for their positions.

With contributions of Stefano Bacin, Jochen Bojanowski, Christoph Horn, Patrick Kain, Lara Ostaric, Fred Rauscher, Oliver Sensen, Elke Schmidt, Dieter Schönecker, and Melissa Zinkin.

This book examines the surprising ramifications of Kant’s late account of practical reason’s obligatory ends as well as a revolutionary implication of his theory of property. It thereby sheds new light on Kant’s place in the history of modern moral philosophy.

The articles in this volume examine Kant’s notions of the “unity of consciousness”, “apperception” and “I Think” from a variety of perspectives. Several papers are concerned with textual analyses of the “Transcendental Deduction of the Categories” and the “Paralogisms of the Pure Reason”. Other contributions contextualize the notion of the unity of consciousness in relation to Kant’s work as a whole and to eighteenth-century philosophy.

“This is an immensely useful resource for other scholars and philosophers wishing to understand Kant’s views on love.”
– Rae Langton, University of Cambridge

What did Immanuel Kant really think about love? In Kant on Love, Pärttyli Rinne provides the first systematic study of ‘love’ in the philosophy of Kant. Rinne argues that love is much more important to Kant than previously realised, and that understanding love is actually essential for Kantian ethical life.The study involves two interpretative main propositions. First, that love in Kant includes an underlying general division of love into love of benevolence and love of delight. Further, the study divides Kant’s concept of love into several aspects of love, such as self-love, sexual love (and love of beauty), love of God, love of neighbor and love in friendship. A chapter of the book is devoted to each of these aspects, beginning with the lowest forms of self-love as crude animality, and moving gradually upwards towards idealised ethical notions of love. One way or another, the major aspects relate to the general division of love.This analytical trajectory yields the second main proposition of the study: Together, the aspects of love reveal an ascent of love in Kant’s thought. Perhaps surprisingly, for Kant, love permeates human existence from the strongest impulses of nature to the highest ideals of morally deserved happiness. 

Engaging in the Kantian debate on the existence of non-conceptual content, this work attempts to provide an adequate understanding of Kant’s doctrine of the two sources of human knowledge, sensibility and understanding, and of their heterogeneous ways of representing, through intuitions and concepts. It elaborates on a consistent reading of this dualism in relation to the Transcendental Aesthetic, the synthesis of imagination, and the schematism.

Is statehood a sine qua non for freedom? As showed, Kant regards law and the state as necessary conditions for the realization of moral autonomy. Thus, his legal doctrine goes beyond being an integral component of his critical moral philosophy. In addition, the author shows that the recognition of individual rights of freedom, legal constraints, and the prohibition of liberal resistance are mutually compatible expressions of Kantian liberalism.

For several years, the doctrine of the “Categories of Freedom”, which Kant delivers in a highly condensed fashion in his “Critique of Practical Reason”, has been drawing the attention of the scholars more and more. The present volume is the first to gather contributions which take this central lesson of Kant’s moral philosophy into account, while varying the emphasis both historically as well as systematically.

The work addresses Kant’s Theory of Synthesis, that is of decisive importance for Kant’s critical endeavor, to found experience as a combination of understanding and sensibility, of concept and intuition. In the light of this elementary connectivity, the specific actions of synthesis are isolated and examined in their relatedness to each other. Thus shows that Synthesis in Kant’s Philosophy is still not obsolete.

This monograph is a new interpretation of Kant’s àtemporal conception of the causality of the freedom of the will. The interpretation is based on an analysis of Kant’s primary conception of an action, viz., as a causal consequence of the will. The analysis in turn is based on H. P. Grice’s causal theory of perception and on P. F. Strawson’s modification of the theory.

The monograph rejects the customary assumption that Kant’s maxim of an action is a causal determination of the action. It assumes instead that the maxim is definitive of the action, and since its main thesis is that an action for Kant is to be primarily understood as an effect of the will, it concludes that the maxim of an action can only be its logical determination.　

Kant’s àtemporal conception of the causality of free will is confronted not only by contemporary philosophical conceptions of causality, but by Kant’s own complementary theory of causality, in the Second Analogy of Experience. According to this latter conception, causality is a natural relation among physical and psychological objects, and is therefore a temporal relation among them. Faced with this conflict, Kant scholars like Allen W. Wood either reject Kant’s àtemporal conception of causality or like Henry E. Allison accept it, but only in an anodyne form.　 Both camps, however, make the aforementioned assumption that Kant’s maxim of an action is a causal determination of the action. The monograph, rejecting the assumption, belongs to neither camp.

The author of “Kant's theory of biology” analyzes the development of the theory of organized beings in Kant’s writings and provides a commentary on the “Second introduction” and §§61–91 of the “Critique of the power of judgment” in part 1 of the book. In part 2, she introduces a new systematic reading of Kant’s theory of biology, and determines the place of this theory in early modern discourses of the life sciences and natural history in part 3.

Unlike earlier attempts to prove the completeness of the table of judgments, this book takes the fundamental position that an answer can only be found in the context of a basic interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason that encompasses the metaphysical and transcendental deduction of the categories and ideas, the role played by cognitive capacity, transcendental apperception, and the theory of affects.

In a short chapter of the Critique of Practical Reason entitled “On the Typic of the Pure Practical Power of Judgment,” Kant addresses a crucial problem facing his theory of moral judgment: How can we represent the supersensible moral law so as to apply it to actions in the sensible world? Despite its importance to Kant's project, previous studies of the Typic have been fragmentary, disparate, and contradictory.
This book provides a detailed commentary on the Typic, elucidating how it enables moral judgment by means of the law of nature, which serves as the 'type', or analogue, of the moral law. In addition, the book situates the Typic, both historically and conceptually, within Kant's theory of symbolic representation. While many commentators have assimilated the Typic to the aesthetic notion of 'symbolic hypotyposis' in the third Critique, the author contends that it has greater continuities with the theoretical notion of 'symbolic anthropomorphism' in the Prolegomena.
As the first comprehensive, book-length study of the Typic that critically engages with the secondary literature, this monograph fills an important gap in the research on Kant's ethics and aesthetics and provides a starting point for further inquiry and debate.

The sensus communis imparts a priori and a posteriori, intellect and sensuality, intersubjectivity and intrasubjectivity. The study analyzes the meanings and functions of the term in Kant’s work as a whole, following Kant’s own classification of philosophy. It investigates the sensus communis logicus in the theoretical realm, the sensus communis aestheticus in the aesthetic realm, and the sensus communis practicus in the practical realm.

Although Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals is among the most interpreted of philosophical works, its core theorems still remain opaque. This is particularly the case for the “end in itself.” This study examines questions in relation to the theorem’s content, systematic function, and complex references, especially its connection to Kant’s deduction of the categorical imperative.

Situated between pure practical reason and mere technical-practical skillfulness, prudence risks falling into the margins for Kant. This book seeks to discover a systematic place for prudence in his works and to reconfigure it as the empirical form of practical judgment, showing that prudence is essential to Kant’s notion of happiness as well as for the fulfillment of moral imperatives.

Kant is regarded as the key critic of eudemonic ethics. Interpreters have claimed that for Kant, happiness was neither a precondition for morality nor a reward for moral conduct. However, this study shows that happiness does play a key role in Kant’s moral philosophy. It reveals Kant’s practical philosophy as a theory that seriously considers the irrefutable necessity for individual happiness in life.

Kant’s omnipresence in contemporary cosmopolitan discourses contrasts with the fact that little is known about the historical origins and the systematic status of his cosmopolitan theory. This study argues that Kant’s cosmopolitanism should be understood as embedded and dynamic. Inspired by Rousseau, Kant developed a form of cosmopolitanism rooted in a modified form of republican patriotism. In contrast to static forms of cosmopolitanism, Kant conceived the tensions between embedded, local attachments and cosmopolitan obligations in dynamic terms. He posited duties to develop a cosmopolitan disposition (Gesinnung), to establish common laws or cosmopolitan institutions, and to found and promote legal, moral, and religious communities which reform themselves in a way that they can pass the test of cosmopolitan universality. This is the cornerstone of Kant’s cosmopolitanism, and the key concept is the vocation (Bestimmung) of the individual as well as of the human species. Since realizing or at least approaching this vocation is a long-term, arduous, and slow process, Kant turns to the pedagogical implications of this cosmopolitan project and spells them out in his later writings. This book uncovers Kant’s hidden theory of cosmopolitan education within the framework of his overall practical philosophy.

This essay argues that we can only develop a proper grasp of Kant's practical philosophy if we appreciate the central role played in his thought by the notion of the interests of reason. While it is generally acknowledged that Kant does not regard reason as a purely instrumental faculty, but sees it as endowed with its own essential interests, this book is the first to explain how the notion of the interests of reason lies at the heart of his philosophical project - and how it allows us to make sense of some of the most puzzling aspects of his practical philosophy.

Until now, the literature on Kant’s Opus Postumum has lacked a commentary on the key draft, “Transition 1–14.” The study offers a systematic interpretation with reference to Kant’s other works – especially the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant’s presentation of natural science as a true science of nature is thereby placed in the context of his transcendental philosophy.

Kant uses the term ontology in a doubled way. Most of the time, he attaches a negative valence to it, but occasionally he equates ontology to transcendental philosophy. Rivera demonstrates how these two ways of using the term are not contradictory.

Kant’s notion of the universal law of right protects the individual’s general freedom of action. The question is whether this broad law of right is an inevitable consequence of Kantian moral philosophy. Can the idea of general freedom of action be derived from the categorical imperative? Using examples from constitutional court cases, Kalscheuer examines the central problem of the relationship between law and morality in Kant.

This work argues that teleological motives lie at the heart of Kant’s critical philosophy and that a precise analysis of teleological structures can both illuminate the basic strategy of its fundamental arguments and provide a key to understanding its unity. It thus aims, through an examination of each of Kant’s major writings, to provide a detailed interpretation of his claim that philosophy in the true sense must consist of a teleologia rationis humanae.
The author argues that Kant’s critical philosophy forged a new link between traditional teleological concepts and the basic structure of rationality, one that would later inform the dynamic conception of reason at the heart of German Idealism. The process by which this was accomplished began with Kant’s development of a uniquely teleological conception of systematic unity already in the precritical period. The individual chapters of this work attempt to show how Kant adapted and refined this conception of systematic unity so that it came to form the structural basis for the critical philosophy.

In the past few decades a remarkable change occurred in Kant scholarship: the "other" Kant has been discovered, i.e. the one of the doctrine of virtue and the anthropology. Through the rediscovery of Kant's investigations into the empirical and sensuous aspects of knowledge, our understanding of Kant's philosophy has been enriched by an important element that has allowed researchers to correct supposed deficiencies in Kant's work. In addition, further questions concerning the nature of Kant's philosophy itself have been formulated: the more the "other" Kant comes to the fore, the stronger the question concerning the connection between pure philosophy and empirical investigation becomes.
The aim of this study is to show that the psychological and anthropological interpretations of Kant's pure philosophy are not convincing and at the same time to illustrate some connections between his critical and anthropological investigations by means of an analysis of the theory of the faculties.
Against both a "transcendental psychological" and an "anthropological" reading, the book presents Kant's theory of the faculties as a constitutive part of his critical philosophy and shows that there is a close connection between Kant's pure philosophy and his moral aesthetic.

This study shows for the first time that it is possible to describe the connections between morality and happiness in Immanuel Kant's philosophy in structural terms. Ultimately, Kant's ethical philosophy teaches that goodness is a never-ending task in a conscious life, a life that remains aware of its own proclivities, engages with them wisely, and regards morality as the final reference point.

This study presents the historical impact of Kant’s Opus postumum, the philosopher’s last unfinished work, in a critical discussion that extends from the time of the work’s initial reception in the 19th century up to contemporary Kant research. The common thread that unites this study is a systematic historical reconstruction of the disputes between those interpreters who saw this work as a major departure on the part of the late Kant from the philosophy of his critical writings, and others who saw this posthumously published work as coherently evolving from Kant’s earlier transcendental philosophy.

There has been a recent upsurge in attention to the categories of freedom in Kant’s “Critique of Practical Reason.” Puls has deepened the discussion with a study that takes the perspective of developmental history. He engages in a comprehensive analysis of the architectonic position of practical categories of reason in Kant. The implication of these practical categories for Kant’s overall critique of reason are examined, from the early Reflections to the Metaphysics of Morals.

What is the founding relationship between Kant’s general principle of rational law and his categorical imperative? On the one hand, Mosayebi answers this question by showing how Kant consistently developed the general principle of law from his moral philosophy. On the other hand, he demonstrates those transcendental critical moments that characterize this principle in contrast to the categorical imperative.

This work attempts to overcome the prejudice that Kant's philosophy is inadequate for a reflection of the cultural world. The author explores the possibility of a cultural philosophy based upon a Kantian notion of culture, and contends that Kant's understanding of philosophy can be viewed as a theory of technical reason. The line of argument reveals that it is possible to reconstruct at least the outlines of a Kantian philosophy of culture.

How can what we view as morally correct be the motive force for our actions? This work investigates this question with a view to Kant’s action theory and moral philosophy, based on a close textual reading. The author argues that Kant’s response to the question of moral motivation is a theory of practical rationality in which the practical importance of moral reasons as motives is made understandable through a theory of moral-rational sensibility.

This book provides a commentary on Kant‘s „Postulates of Empirical Thought in General“. It investigates Kant‘s entire theory of modal concepts from the mid-1750s up to the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason. It was in this work that Kant first answered the question „What is an object?“. In the process, he responded to other theories of objectivity native to the 18th century: rationalism, empiricism, idealism, and skepticism.

This work defends an anti-realist two-world interpretation of Kant’s transcendental idealism against prevailing realist views. Kant’s anti-realism is made more precise using concepts developed Michael Dummett and Crispin Wright. These concepts are fruitful not only for the analysis of Kant’s own position but also for a clear understanding of differing interpretations of transcendental idealism.

Only recently have researchers gradually begun to consider the categories of freedom developed by Kant in his Critique of Practical Reason. This treatise is the first to examine the topic comprehensively and systematically. Far from being the result of unimaginative systems thinking, a closer inspection reveals the doctrine of practical categories to be a secret focal point of Kant’s practical philosophy.

Immanuel Kant is often considered to be the source of the contemporary idea of human dignity, but his conception of human dignity and its relation to human value and to the requirement to respect others have not been widely understood. Kant on Human Dignity offers the first in-depth study in English of this subject. Based on a comprehensive analysis of all the passages in which Kant uses the term ‘dignity’, as well as an analysis of the most prominent arguments for a value of human beings in the Kant literature, the book carefully examines different ways of construing the relationship between dignity, value and respect for others. It takes seriously Kant’s Copernican Revolution in moral philosophy: Kant argues that moral imperatives cannot be based on any values without yielding heteronomy. Instead it is imperatives of reason that determine what is valuable. The requirement to respect all human beings is one such imperative. Respect for human beings does not follow from human dignity—for this would violate autonomy—but is an unconditional command of reason. Following this train of thought yields a unified account of Kant’s moral philosophy.

There is a half-sentence in § 59 of Kant’s Critique of Judgment that appears relatively abruptly and is often overlooked: “so all of our knowledge of God is merely symbolic”. This study attempts to understand this statement by means of an interpretation of the first part of § 59. This interpretation opens up topics like Kant’s concept of symbols, the status of religious symbols, the relationship between symbol and analogy, and Kant’s understanding of the relation of human knowledge to a transcendent God. The book manages to contribute to an understanding both of Kant’s philosophy of religion and of philosophical theology.

Even today, prominent voices accuse Kant's philosophy of implying the individual to be subjectivist and monologic. However nothing could actually be further removed from Kant's position than subjectivism of this kind. Kant's reason is public through and through. Its very existence depends on public argumentation. This work looks at "public reason" in the three critiques and other works and shows how closely Kant's theoretical philosophy is bound up with his political writings.

This work aims to develop the Kantian concept of self, or rather consciousness of self, in terms of its specific epistemological meaning. The author approaches this fundamental topic, which is undoubtedly at the basis of critical idealism, by comprehensively reconstructing the immanent lines of development of Kant's theory of subject on the basis of precise text analyses. He traces them from their origins in the "silent decade" of the 1770s via the discussion of paralogism to the experimental drafts of the late reflections.

Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason culminates in an explanation of the possibility of experience by way of a system of twelve principles of the pure understanding. The present work reconstructs the first set of these principles, the axioms of intuition, through a careful reading of the text with particular attention paid to how these axioms fit into Kant’s overall system. The author explains how these principles are fundamental for the possibility of mathematics and experience.

The author explores the differing forms of unity in the transcendental conditions for the synthesis of experience. His results shed light on Kant’s understanding of synthesis. The three main chapters deal with the architectonic unity of philosophy (and every science), the identity of functions of the understanding that provide unity, and with the differing applications in the synthesis of intuition and judgment.

Kant’s definition of substance is the focus of this philosophical study. The analysis shows that an adequate understanding of the term and the “critical” metaphysics of the substance which result from it must take into account the philosophical controversy over the simple substance in the first half of the 18th century dominated by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Christian Wolff. It is only against this background that the complexity and inconsistence of the “critical” concept of substance becomes fully apparent.

Human destruction of the natural environment and recent technical advances in the life sciences raise urgent questions about our relationship to nature. In light of these questions, developing an adequate philosophy of the environment is a pressing concern. Angela Breitenbach shows that Kant's philosophy of nature provides a rich resource for grounding a contemporary environmental philosophy. Against the widespread view that Kant sees a clear division between humans and nature, the book explores how Kant's conception of nature relies on a vital analogy with human reason. The author concludes by showing how Kant's analogical account of nature can enrich current debates in environmental ethics and the philosophy of biology.

The objective of this study is to demonstrate the coherence of Kant’s Critiques from a transcendental-critical perspective. To achieve this, the author paraphrases the Critiques , and interprets them from a common epistemic horizon; furthermore he takes up relevant positions from the research literature. The accents set by this view lead to some shifts in the image of Kant taught today which particularly affect the Categorical Imperative and what is called the “Aesthetics”.

Analytic philosophy has leveled many challenges to Kant’s ascription of necessary properties and relations to objects in his Critique of Pure Reason. Some of these challenges can be answered, it is argued here, largely in terms of techniques belonging to analytic philosophy itself, in particular, to its philosophy of language. This Kantian response is the primary objective of this book. It takes the form of a compromise between the real existence of the objects that we can intuit and that get our knowledge started – dubbed initiators – and the ideality of the necessary properties and relations that Kant ascribes to our sensible representations of initiators, which he entitles appearances. Whereas the real existence of initiators is independent of us and our senses, the necessity of these properties and relations of appearances is due to their origins in the mind.
The Kantian compromise between real existence and ideal necessity is formulated in terms of David Kaplan’s interpretation of de re necessity in his article, “Quantifying In” – his response to Quine’s concern that a commitment to such a necessity leads to an acceptance of an unwanted traditional Aristotelian essentialism.
In addition, the book first abstracts and then departs from its interpretation of Kant to provide a realistic account of the relation between existence and de re necessity.

Anyone interested in establishing an intellectual connection between Kant and Bacon must first ask the question as to what similarity could exist between Kant, who carried out a transcendental turn in philosophy, and Bacon, the “general of empirical philosophy.” Only through such considerations can one understand why Kant’s first Critique announces a new epoch in philosophy with a passage from, of all things, Bacon’s Instauratio Magna.

A central concern in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is the philosophical justification of the possibility of experience. Imagination and Experience in Kant's Philosophy shows that the imagination plays both a systematic and methodological role in this justification and construes Kant's theory of imagination as a central point of his epistemology.

The Critique of the Quantum Power of Judgement analyzes the a priori principles which underlie the empirical knowledge provided by quantum theory. In contrast to other transcendental approaches to quantum physics, none of the transcendental principles established by Kant is modified in order to cope with the new epistemological situation that arises with the asumption of the quantum postulate. Rather, by considering Bohr’s views, it is argued that classical concepts provide the mathematical formalism of quantum theory with physical reference through symbolic analogies in the strict Kantian sense.

The main result of the investigation is the determination of the highest principle under which quantum objects are subsumed. This principle states that the conditions of the possibility of the systematic unity of contextual experience are at the same time the conditions of the possibility of quantum objects. Upon this principle rests the possibility of any a priori synthetic knowledge of quantum objects. Therefore, the Critique of the Quantum Power of Judgement yields the prolegomena to any future quantum metaphysics.

Many classical authors and theories occur in Kant’s work. In this first complete treatment of the topic, the author shows that, contrary to the opinion held by scholars for many years, it is not so much Plato and Aristotle as Hellenistic philosophy which plays the decisive role in Kant’s thinking. The three Critiques are used to develop the consistencies and breaks in Kant’s understanding of the Ancients and to illuminate their consequences for the interpretation of his work.

How is the aesthetic appreciation of objects to be understood? According to Kant, not as a case of cognitive knowledge. Using the free play of cognitive ability, he provides an answer which appeals above all through its intuitive plausibility. This book argues, however, that the role of play in aesthetics can only be clarified after we have fully considered the practicalistic tendency in Kant's approach.

In the present-day debate on free will, Kant's theory of freedom has been dismissed as bad metaphysics. This however leaves decisive questions partially unanswered, namely 1. To what concept of freedom does Kant lay claim? 2. What functions are ascribed to it? 3. What proof does Kant advance to justify it? The author demonstrates that Kant's theory has not been adequately represented in all three points, and resumes the negotiation about its systematic validity. Bojanowski demonstrates why the practice of morality cannot dispense with Kant's concept of autonomy as absolute freedom, and on the basis of Kant's epistemic critique he defends this concept against a deterministic moral scepticism. In conclusion, he demonstrates why this concept does not fail when faced with the possibility of morally evil acts, but that in fact talking about morally evil acts is not possible without it.

Taking account of Kant's unpublished mss., the author presents a close textual interpretation of Kant's logic of concepts. He deals on the one hand with Kant's explanations of the form of all concepts per se, and on the other with Kant's theory of certain pure concepts contained within the cognitive faculty itself.

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.

Does matter consist of simple substances, or is it infinitely divisible? This is the question in the second antinomy in the Critique of Pure Reason. This first comprehensive systematic study of the antinomy of divisibility analyses its derivation, the proofs of the thesis and antithesis, and their resolution. The developmental and historical dimensions are also discussed, taking present-day problems in the philosophy of nature into account. The study demonstrates that the antinomy of divisibility is on the one hand a critique of metaphysics, but at the same time gains a positive result for Kant's transcendental philosophy. The resolution of the antinomy presents firstly a conceptual sharpening of realism and idealism and of the transcendental concept of phenomena. Secondly it shows that the structure of matter is dependent on a priori determinations by reason and understanding. These insights are highly relevant not only for Kant's project of establishing an a priori foundation for the natural sciences but also for the problem of the soul.

The author defends Kant against the criticism well established among scholars that his "system of transcendental ideas" represents an excessively artificial and above all unsuccessful attempt to embed traditional problems of metaphysica specialis in his own theory of epistemological capacity. With his assumptions Kant succeeds however in subjectively deducing these concepts of the unconditional. In addition, the transcendental ideas form a reconstructable "system" which can be related to that of the categories.

Kimmek presents a study which corrects important aspects of the views previously held in Kant research of the systematic construction and deep structure of the "transcendental dialectic" of the Critique of Pure Reason.

Unlike conventional interpretations of Kant's Rechtslehre, Rainer Friedrich demonstrates that Kant does not derive the necessity of a state of public law from natural property law. Rather, the innate human right of liberty forms the subjective legal basis of the state.

The close textual analysis both consults the preparatory studies to the doctrine of law and virtue and Kant's relevant lectures and considers contemporary commentaries. The study emphasizes the systematicity of duty underlying the Rechtslehre, Kant's doctrine of subjective rights, the doctrine of original acquisition and the significance of the general will for private law, together with the transition from private to public law. Rainer Friedrich provides a coherent historically and systematically arranged reconstruction of Kant's rationality of law.

The present study clearly distances itself from previous literature on the topic by demonstrating that Kant's theory of time cannot be understood without his theory of space and his critique of idealism. Karin Michel presents a reconstruction of Kant's proof of the genuine subjectivity of time. She takes account of both the form and the content of the proof, and also takes issue throughout with Kant commentators and critics. This clarifies not only Kant's radically new philosophical approach, but also the significance of the proof for his grand project of the critique of reason.

This study aims to present the conditions allowing for a theory of society which is both objective and, at the same time, critical. The author bases his argument on Kant’s theoretical and practical philosophy, in particular on the relationship between the concepts of nature and of liberty in his three Critiques.

The discussion of the theoretical conception of Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s critical theory against the background of Kant’s philosophy leads towards a theory of society which can meet the demands both of objectivity and of a moral assessment of the object of the theory.

In contrast to the customary interpretation that the religious question about whether there is a God does not arise for Kant until he turns to moral philosophy, the reconstruction of the basic structures of Kant’s theoretical philosophy shows that the question about God already emanates from the theory of knowledge and from ontology.

According to Kant, one must consider the limits of knowledge in order to create room for faith. It is through the contemplation of these limits, that is, ultimately through the contemplation of the self as a knowing subject, that religious feeling arises and that the human and divine incarnation correlate.

Beatrix Himmelmann demonstrates how much Kant did actually have to say on the theme of happiness, which he had allegedly banned from his considerations. She presents a comprehensive historical and systematic account of Kant’s ethics and demonstrates conclusively why recent discussions on the question of the good life do not have to go right back to ancient philosophy.

Paul Natterer's systematic commentary on the Critique of Pure Reason fills a long-standing gap in Kant scholarship. It is based on an analysis and evaluation of all the German and English-speaking literature published on the Critique since 1945.

The influence of Kant’s thought on present-day philosophy remains unbroken. The author sets himself the task of examining its power in detail. He does this with special reference to cognitive science and the philosophy of mind. The result is a systematic evaluation of the Critique of Pure Reason as a metatheory of present-day interdisciplinary research into cognition.

In this context, Natterer presents the first detailed analysis of the systemic positions of empirical psychology, formal logic and general metaphysics in the Kantian theory of cognition. In addition, from the perspective of the history of science he compares the positions put forward in the Critique of Pure Reason with the ancient, scholastic and modern traditions in which Kant’s thought can be situated.

Overviews, indexes and the structural division of the work into 36 compact chapters make it possible to access the comprehensive and complex material rapidly and methodically.

Beckett's novel Molloy and the question how this work evokes a particular kind of feeling associated with its exhibition of meaninglessness, namely the feeling of the sublime, is the point of departure for this study.

Kant's theory of the sublime is interpreted within the framework of his aesthetic and moral theories, suggesting a way to understand the claim to universal validity for aesthetic judgements. Kant claims that the judgement of the sublime serves morality but he fails to provide this link, so a theory of how this aesthetic judgement can contribute to the cultivation of moral character is developed. It is argued that Kant held that art, including narrative art like the novel, can be sublime. Kant's theory of the sublime is shown to be relevant for modern works of art, and the application of this Kantian framework throws new light on the discussion of the moral aspects of Beckett's literary work. According to this account, Molloy is a sublime work of art, and despite its amoral content can serve the reader's moral cultivation.

Hitherto there have been widely differing interpretations of the contradiction which Kant describes in the Critique of Pure Reason under the headings ‘Dialectics’ and ‘Antinomy of Practical Reason’. This volume documents for the first time the enormous variety of diverging interpretations and presents a text-oriented analysis of antinomy and its resolution which in many respects contradicts the interpretations and assessments widely accepted today. The study demonstrates that antinomy only became possible after Kant had undertaken important revisions of the principles of moral obligation and motive after1781.It demonstrates how the antinomy of practical reason characteristically differs from the antinomies in the Critique of Pure Reason in its structure and function.

Philosophy enquires into the relationship between being and thought, existence and determination. In his early works, Kant approaches this basic problem of philosophy as determined by conventional rationalist metaphysics. Starting from the realisation that existence is not the determination, is not the predicate of an object, but its absolute position, Kant intervenes in the ontological and theological discussion of his age and develops his own philosophical position from the differentiation between real and philosophical reasons.

The author demonstrates Kant's struggle with this basic problem from his pre-critical writings up to his Critiques. In an excursus he deals with the posthumous works and with the return of the approach in Schelling's late philosophy and its turn to an unpredicated being.

The notion of system in Kant’s conception of a priori forms of knowledge is an organological one. Central to a philosophical system of this kind is the unity of purpose. Epistemological activity of transcendental subjectivity is therefore focussed self-organized activity with the judgement of experience as its telos. The present study mobilizes this basic insight to interpret the essential elements of the transcendental constitution of knowledge, i.e. of pure forms of intuition and categories. In this forced understanding, experience is living self-execution of the subject responsible in its theoretical empirical verdicts. Ultimately, this activity must even be interpreted as praxis in the moral-practical sense.

These results extrapolate theses which at times are concealed in Kant’s work and sometimes are even counter-cast, so that occasionally one has to use Kant to argue against Kant. They also reveal aspects which have not been thematized in the conventional reception of Kant or have hitherto been missed in his work.

Although Kant sees the source of the basic concepts of our knowledge in understanding, it is still unclear whether he meant our capacity for thought or the totality of our epistemological powers. The author attempts to clarify the matter with an analysis of the pre-critical writings and the Critique of Pure Reason. In addition, he elucidates the system of these concepts.

The author sets himself off against other interpreters, who place the source of the categories in the unity of apperception (like the post-Kantian idealists, Cohen, Henrich etc.) or in the imagination as the root of all ability (Heidegger) and then ascribe these doctrines to Kant himself. Rosales develops the system of these concepts from the relationship of apperception to imagination, and methodically distinguishes between his attempt as an independent development of Kantian potential and the philosopher's own work.

This book presents the first critical evaluation of all four of Kant’s antinomies of pure reason by applying the instruments of formal logic and by testing the validity of the antinomies against the criteria of modern science and natural philosophy.

The author first reconstructs at length the ‘metaphysical deduction’ of the transcendental and cosmological ideas of reason. Kant's doctrine of the antinomies of pure reason is then placed in the context of his theoretical philosophy, and this is followed by a philological and formal-logical analysis of the four antinomies. Using the findings of modern science and natural philosophy, the author finally presents a systematic evaluation of Kant’s argumentation.

The study examines the noumenal, the spiritual essence of religion. Starting from Kant's practical philosophy, it shows that this noumenon, which is seen as the indirect symbolic way of understanding the world, is familiar to everybody who strives to lead a good and honest life, including those with an atheistic orientation. The author accesses the normative critical concept of religion in three stages. To start with, central aporias of Kant's practical philosophy (doctrine of postulates, theory of the highest good) are reconstructed and cancelled using the synthetic practical proposition a priori. In the second stage, these aporias are related to further topics of Kant's practical philosophy in order to elucidate the importance of religion for practical consciousness. In the third section, the concept of religion gained systematically is further developed to a critical normative concept of phenomenal religion. With this concretisation the noumenal religion becomes a generalized concrete concept when compared with a mere rational religion.

Nachdem Kant seine Moralphilosophie in den beiden Grundlegungsschriften der 1780er Jahre – der Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten von 1785 und der Kritik der praktischen Vernunft von 1788 – zunächst nur begründet hat, arbeitet er diese in der Metaphysik der Sitten (1797) zum System aus. Im Zentrum der drei Einleitungen des Werkes steht dabei die Opposition von Rechtspflichten und Tugendpflichten. Daneben differenziert Kant nunmehr aber auch die Gesetzgebung der reinen praktischen Vernunft in eine juridische und eine ethische; dieser Differenzierung verdankt die Spätschrift ihre Zweiteilung in Recht und Ethik. 

Die beiden Unterscheidung sind keineswegs identisch. Entspringen doch Kant zufolge Rechtspflichten sowohl der juridischen als auch der ethischen Gesetzgebung, während Tugendpflichten allein in der ethischen Gesetzgebung wurzeln. Allerdings sind die Kriterien, welche Kant bemüht, um Rechts- und Tugendpflichten voneinander abzugrenzen, teilweise dieselben wie die, anhand derer er die juridische und ethische Gesetzgebung voneinander abhebt. Die vorliegende Studie geht der Frage nach, wie diese für Kants System der Moralphilosophie zentralen Unterscheidungen zu verstehen sind, wie Kant sie begründet und wie sie zusammenhängen.