New Book: Kant on Practical Justification

 
Kant on Practical Justification

Ed. by Mark Timmons and Sorin Baiasu

(Oxford University Press, 2013)

400 pages

 



Description

This volume of new essays provides a comprehensive and structured examination of Kantian accounts of practical justification. This examination serves as a starting point for a focused investigation of the Kantian approach to justification in practical disciplines (ethics, legal and political philosophy or philosophy of religion). The recent growth of literature on this subject is not surprising given that Kant's approach seems so promising: he claims to be able to justify unconditional normative claims without recourse to assumptions, views or doctrines, which are not in their turn justifiable. Within the context of modern pluralism, this is exactly what the field needs: an approach which can demonstrably show why certain normative claims are valid, and why the grounds of these claims are valid in their turn, and why the freedom to question them should not be stifled. Although this has been a growth area in philosophy, no systematic and sustained study of the topic of practical justification in Kantian philosophy has been undertaken so far.

Contents [preview]

Introduction - Sorin Baiasu

1. Kant's Rechtfertigung and the Epistemic Nature of Practical Justification - Sorin Baiasu
2. Why Ought Implies Can - Sebastian Rödl
3. Kant on Practical Reason - Allen Wood
4. Constructing Practical Justification - Larry Krasnoff
5. Anthropology and Metaphysics in Kant's Categorical Imperative of Law - Otfried Höffe
6. Kant, Moral Obligation and the Holy Will - Robert Stern
7. Is Practical Justification in Kant Ultimately Dogmatic? - Karl Ameriks
8. Constructivism and Self-constitution - Paul Guyer
9. Formal Approaches to Kant's Formula of Humanity - Andrews Reath
10. Kant's Grounding Project in the Doctrine of Virtue - Houston Smit & Mark Timmons
11. Kant and Libertarianism [abstract] - Howard Williams
12. Kant's Practical Justification of Freedom - Henry E. Allison
13. The Place of Kant's Theism in His Moral Philosophy - John Hare
14. Freedom, Temporality and Belief - A. W. Moore

Several of the essays are based on papers presented at the UK Kant Society Annual Conference in 2007.

Mark Timmons is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona. He is the author of "Morality without Foundations" (Oxford University Press, 1999).

Sorin Baiasu is Reader in Philosophy at Keele University.