With
a Foreword by Kenneth Baynes
In Germany, Otfried Höffe has been a leading contributor to
debates in moral, legal, political, and social philosophy for close
to three decades. Höffe's work (like that of his contemporary,
Jürgen Habermas), brings into relief the relevance of these
German discussions to their counterparts in English-language circles.
In this book, originally published in Germany in 1990 and expanded
since, Höffe proposes an extended and original interpretation
of Kant, philosophy of law, and social morality. Höffe articulates
his reading of Kant in the context of an account of modernity as
a "polyphonous project," in which the dominant themes of pluralism
and empiricism are countered by the theme of categorically binding
moral principles, such as human rights. Paying equal attention to
the nuances of Kant's texts and the character of the philosophical
issues in their own right, Höffe ends up with a Kantianism
that requires, rather than precludes, a moral anthropology and that
questions the fashionable juxtaposition of Kant and Aristotle as
exemplars of incompatible approaches to ethical and political thought.
