The invention of autonomy : a history of modern moral philosophy

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Bibliographic Information

The invention of autonomy : a history of modern moral philosophy

J.B. Schneewind

Cambridge University Press, 1998

  • : hbk
  • : pbk

Available at  / 57 libraries

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Note

Bibliography: p. 555-592

Includes indexes

Description and Table of Contents

Description

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
  • 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.

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