Customer Reviews

Immanuel Kant's Moral Theory

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There are so many books written about Kant that one could almost emend the statement, "Of the making of books, there is no end" to "Of the making of books on Kant, there is no end." Kant is not merely studied, he is studied in enormous depth and with a passion and meticulousness reserved for few philosophers in history. When I was working on my Ph.D. in philosophy, even though I had read dozens of books on Kant, and was planning on spending half of my doctoral thesis on aspects of his moral thought, I would never have dreamed, in academic parlance, of describing myself as a Kant "specialist." I remained hesitant to even acknowledge myself as "competent" in Kant's ethics.

Of all the books I read on Kant's ethics, I found this one to be the best at providing an overview of Kant's moral thought and how it related to his work as a whole. Sullivan resists the widespread tendency to subdivide Kant. There are Kant scholars who expend all their efforts on one aspect of Kant's philosophy, with little effort to explain the connections with the rest of his work or to show how the two interrelate and, in fact, require one another. Moreover, even scholars working with Kant's moral theory oftentimes focus on one or two or perhaps three texts to the exclusion of the rest of his work, to the point of ignoring completely what Kant has to say about ethics in some of his works less directly concerned with moral philosophy. For instance, it is impossible to understand Kant's views about the demands of the moral law if one does not also understand his thinking about immortality. A larger number of Kant scholars have attempted to understand his ethical thought with no reference to his religious philosophy, but this isn't understanding Kant so much as preparing a fully secularized version of Kant (in fact, Kant is pretty secular even after brining all his religious beliefs to bear, but that is a separate issue).

Sullivan is marvelous at taking a particular issue in Kant, and then discussing it across a variety of texts, sometimes texts that even specialists ignore. His work is primarily integrative and synthetic, although there is also a strong analytical strain. If I were to teach a course on Kant's ethics, this is the book I would use as a secondary source. If I were taking a course on Kant's ethics, this is the book I would rely on most, apart from Kant's own writings. Advanced students and scholars will argue with many aspects of Sullivan's exposition, but no book on Kant enjoys universal approbation. But I question whether anyone studying Kant's work for the first time or trying to study his moral thought as a whole will find a more helpful book than this. It is to be recommended for its breadth, its comprehensiveness, and its clarity.