Customer Reviews

Creating the Kingdom of Ends

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Christine Korsgaard's _Creating the Kingdom of Ends_ is a fine exposition and elaboration of the ethics of Immanuel Kant.

Consisting of thirteen essays published over the course of a decade or so, the volume is divided into two parts: seven essays mainly dedicated to expounding (and occasionally tweezing) Kantian ethics itself, and six essays comparing/contrasting Kant's moral philosophy with those of Aristotle, Henry Sidgwick, G.E. Moore, David Hume, Bernard Williams, Thomas Nagel, and Derek Parfit.

There's plenty of good stuff in here. First of all, Korsgaard's exposition of Kant will be of interest to anyone who has ever tried to read Kant himself and wants to know what his moral philosophy is really all about. Second, her critiques of other moral philosophers are sharp and trenchant. For example, her destined-to-be-a-classic essay, "The reasons we can share: An attack on the distinction between agent-relative and agent-neutral values," is a close and critical reading of Thomas Nagel's _The Possibility of Altruism_ and _The View from Nowhere_. All in all, this is contemporary moral philosophy at its finest.

The entire volume is also, by the way, a nice cure for the misrepresentations of pseudophilosopher Ayn Rand, who tried her darnedest to give Kant a bad name in order to make room for a more-or-less-Nietzschean ethical subjectivism she called (chuckle) "Objectivism."

(I mention that because somebody is going through all my reviews and clicking "Not helpful" on any in which I say anything negative about Rand. Click away, you rational Objectivist, you!)

While I do not agree with a great deal of what Professor Korsgaard has to say in this text, I willingly admit that it is, by far, the most accessible and easily read sophisticated commentary on Kant's ethical theory.

By easily read, I want to make clear that I do not find her work here simplistic. Indeed, her study of the Groundwork of the Metatphysics of Morals is just as insightful and complex as that of Roger Sullivan or Allen Wood.

What makes Professor Korsgaard's work stand apart is that it can be not only read but actually understood by someone who is familiar with the primary texts. She uses plain, concise language to get her points across. She is to be praised for this.

I recommend this book to anyone with a desire to dig deeper into Kant's moral philosophy. The work should be especially appealing to undergraduates, who are in dire need of more intelligent and intelligible books like this.

Published in the same year as "The Sources of Normativity", "Creating the Kingdom of Ends" is a collection of essays by Christine Korsgaard, a leading Kant scholar and insightful ethicist. I have not read the entire work, only a few of the essays (especially chapters 10 and 13 on intersubjective reasons and personal identity), but I can tell this is an excellent volume.

One suggestion, this is a work that is best read by those who are familiar with the general philosophic debates involved. It is probably most useful as supporting material and explanation of a number of points discussed in "The Sources of Normativity" - as the other work is intended as a stand alone, but is not long enough to provide a full treatment of the issues discussed in this volume.