The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy

by J.B. Schneewind

J.B. Schneewind's remarkable book is the most comprehensive study ever written of the history of moral philosophy. Its aim is to set Kant's still influential ethics in its historical context by showing in detail what the central questions in moral philosophy were for him and how he arrived at his own distinctive ethical views. In its range, analyses, and discussion of the subtle interweaving of religious and political thought with moral philosophy, this is an unprecedented account of the evolution of Kant's ethics.

Genres: Philosophy, History

650 pages, Paperback

First published December 13, 1997

Reviews

[Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exhaustive and exhausting survey, though that's not quite the right term. Schneewind's brief is not really a survey of moral philosophy so much as an extremely thorough effort to contextualize Kant's thinking in (especially) the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Readers will get MUCH more out of this survey if they have at least a passing knowledge of that foundational text. If one makes one's way through the entire book, one comes to understand that essential Kantian concepts like perfect and imperfect duties are not his invention but rather his elucidation of of ideas that had been around for at least a century. In other words, Kant's categorical imperative doesn't appear ab ovo but is itself the long culmination of debates going back at least 300 years. His notion of morality as residing in an individual who gives the law that they subject themselves to has roots in a dozen or more thinkers. The result is not so much to diminish Kant's achievement as to generate a renewed and deepened sense of how much ground he actually cleared. Schneewind is meticulous in teasing out how some ideas in some readers Kant can't have read nevertheless ended up in his mature moral philosophy. So there is nothing cheap or facile about this summary nor can Schneewind be accused of abject hero worship. His account creates a greater appreciation of Kant without beatifying him. It has the added benefit of being an extraordinarily lucid summary of moral thinking in writers as disparate as Montaigne and Wolff, Rousseau and Aquinas. In other words, though this is not primarily a survey of moral philosophy pre-Kant, it ends up doing the job quite well. Having finally bulled through the whole book, I can see that later readings will center on particular chapters as they relate to whatever thinker I may be trying to grapple with. Those steeped in philosophy will doubtless find this volume more to their liking as a regular resource; non-philosophers (like the present reader) will dip in a little more judiciously as the need or whim may arise. In other words, four stars from me, but a trained philosopher might well feel compelled to give this five stars. The depth of knowledge required of nuanced arguments in the history of ethics makes this a hard slog for the non-specialist and best sampled in short bites rather than feasted on all at once.

[loafingcactus · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first reaction to the book is to be very impressed at how the author has managed to organize a great deal of material in a manner that is instructive, but which I mean it promotes understanding of the material. This it does extremely well, and I am very thankful for that and glad I read the book. However, I am concerned that there are issues with the book that surely generate misunderstanding and the book did not flag very well what those misunderstandings are.

There are three identifiable causes of the misunderstanding that could be generated by this book: First, the aim of the book is to understand the history of philosophy as if it were all leading to Kant. This is an extremely useful organizing principle, but it is bound to create some problems. Second, the author is forced to admit (p. 509) that he has selected sources that in some way make sense to him to include in this history, not because Kant was even aware of them. Third, the book is about what it says it is about (The Invention of Autonomy) and yet the hope that it closes with is about Kant’s Newtonian principle- how wills have some unknown coalescence like gravity causes the coalescence of objects.

So, I don’t know. I would recommend the book to anyone at my level of education or less because it certainly left me with a far improved understanding of the history of ethics than I previously had. But I think the reader should be concerned that they are likely to also absorb misunderstandings that the author has not gone out of his way to identify for the reader.

[Sevens · Rating 1 out of 5]

This goes from "you are doomed, everyone", to "you are doomed, everyone, except if god randomly decides to give you grace", to "you are doomed, everyone, except if you are nice, then god has to give you grace" (Pelagianism), to saying that Kant invented autonomy. Along the way, a heap of debris is assembled in some unsystematic, unstructured, wrong, and incomplete fashion that is impressively tedious. Quite the feat, given the subject matter of free will, the good life, rights and obligations and the like. It doesn't help that his style is ashen and that his pontificating over others' views is awkward in poorly demarking what is theirs, what is his interpretation of them, and what are his additions to them.
Those who care would have to adventure through this mess to unearth and assemble the pieces that deal with "imperfect" versus "perfect" rights and obligations, the divergent definition given to them, and the different things assigned to them over time (including eg the relation to moral "perfectionism"). Same for "the Grotian problematic", sentimentalism versus intuitionism and whatever. "Screw that" seems the wiser decision.

This here is supposed to be the triumphant revelation of the book:

"Kant holds that everyone [not just some philosopher king or the Pope] can use the categorical imperative to reason out what they ought to do in particular cases, and to see also why they ought to do it. Bentham made the same claim for his greatest happiness principle, though he did not emphasize its availability to the common understanding as Kant did. They are, to the best of my knowledge, the first philosophers to make such claims."

In tragically comedic fashion, this materializes out of nowhere, after 500 pages and after failing to actually discuss that philosophy of Kant's in any meaningful sense. What it amounts to is the assertion that not contradicting oneself is reasonably possible for everyone, bam, autonomy invented. Skeptics defeated (who had already invented it). Entertainingly, as presented, this would take Hobbes's or maybe Rousseau's contract theory and assert that their political constructs are free of internal contradiction and everyone can and will have the same insight and thus the same "general will/volonte generale". (Or just go back to Plato and the contract theory there, to justice as knowledge, and assert everyone is a philosopher king.) The supposed "invention" by Kant would amount to nothing more than the psychological claim that "people are intelligent/reasonable enough". (Puzzling how things go so wrong in reality. I guess it's not that people are too stupid, they are just too weak. Back to religion.) There follows some meandering skippy rambling on how Kant tied this to the philosophy of Jesus Christ. Which casts yet more doubt. Magisterial.

[Caleb McCary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Does a good job balancing the need to capture hundreds of years of thought while also delving deeper into the major thinkers. While it can bog down in places, Schneewind does a good job of crafting a compelling narrative that is often interesting and engaging.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

Textbooky. Allow me to spice up the origin of Kantian morality:

Rationalism: Oh, kiss me, Empiricism.
Empiricism: You saucy tart.

[Jess Carr · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great philosophy/intellectual history, but sooo long..my feeble brain could not keep all the names/schools straight or make any clear conclusions about Kant, who has little more than a cameo in a book which culminates in him.

[Chelsea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read sections on Scottish moral philosophers.