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Jens Timmerman illuminates Immanuel Kant's answer to an age-old philosophical question: what happens when human beings fail to do as reason bids? He shows that Kant's hybrid theory comprises Socratic intellectualism in the realm of prudence along with an anti-intellectualist or volitional account of immoral action.
List of contents
- Preface
- A note on texts and translations
- 1: Introduction
- 2: Happiness
- 3: The law and the good
- 4: Instrumental imperatives
- 5: The emergence of practical reason
- 6: Incentives, maxims, and freedom
- 7: Two types of practical failure
- 8: Conclusions and implications
- Kant's practical dualisms: a fifteen-point summary
- Bibliography
About the author
Jens Timmermann is the Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of St Andrews. He is a leading authority in Immanuel Kant's ethics and is the author of several books on Kant, including Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: A Commentary (2007) and Sittengesetz und Freiheit (2003). He is also the editor of the first German-English edition of Kant's Groundwork (2011).
Summary
Jens Timmerman illuminates Immanuel Kant's answer to an age-old philosophical question: what happens when human beings fail to do as reason bids? He shows that Kant's hybrid theory comprises Socratic intellectualism in the realm of prudence along with an anti-intellectualist or volitional account of immoral action.
Additional text
Kant's Will at the Crossroads is a fantastic book, elegantly written and a pleasure to read, that advances a single clear argument defending a bold thesis about the nature of practical failure (both prudential and moral). Along the way, the book engages with countless related issues, always with clarity and concision and never as mere tangents...The book is a masterpiece of focused argument for a clear and ultimately simple (in the best sense) interpretation of Kant, even if its simplicity requires overturning what many will see as 'accomplishments' of Kant scholarship over the past fifty years.
