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Essays on Kant’s Political Philosophy

With an Introduction by Howard Lloyd Williams
As a political philosopher, Kant has until recently been
overshadowed by his compatriots Hegel and Marx. With his
strong defense of the rights of the person and his deep
insight into the strengths and weaknesses of modern society
Kant, possibly more than any other political thinker,
anticipated the problems of the late twentieth century.
Kant’s political philosophy, wedded as it is to rights,
reform and gradual progress, is emerging from the shadows
cast by Hegelian and Marxist thinking about the state.

In this volume, thirteen distinguished contributors from the
United States, Canada, Britain, and Germany cast light on
important aspects of Kant’s liberal thinking. Key topics
covered include Kant’s liberal reformism, his relation with
Hegel, his attitude to women, the use of reason, revolution,
Kant’s optimism and his moral and legal rigorism.

Howard Williams is a reader in political theory in the
Department of International Politics, University College of
Wales, Aberystwyth. His previous publications include
Kant’s Political Philosophy, Concepts of
Ideology, and Hegel, Heraclitus, and Marx’s
Dialectic.

352 pages | 5-1/2 x 8-1/2 | © 1992

Philosophy: History and Classic Works

Political Science: Classic Political Thought

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Contributors
Introduction
1. Kant’s Optimism in his Social and Political Theory
Howard Williams
2. Law as Idea of Reason
Ernest J. Weinrib
3. Reason and Politics in the Kantian Enterprise
Onora O’Neill
4. Kant’s Political Cosmology: Freedom and Desire in the ’Remarks’ Concerning Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime
Susan Shell
5. ’Even a Nation of Devils Needs the State’: the Dilemma of Natural Justice
Otfried Höffe
6. Kant’s Concept of the State
Wolfgang Kersting
7. Kant: ’An Honest but Narrow-Minded Bourgeois’?
Susan Mendus
8. Kant’s Theory of Punishment
Samuel Fleischacker
9. Contract, Consent and Exploitation: Kantian Themes
Roger Scruton
10. Kant’s Moral and Political Rigorism
R. F. Atkinson
11. Kant, Revolutions and History
Peter P. Nicholson
12. Defending Hegel from Kant
Steven B. Smith
13. Hannah Arendt on Kant, Truth and Politics
Patrick Riley
Bibliography
Index

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