Kant's Pre-Critical Ethics

by Paul Arthur Schilpp

Kant’s pre-critical period is commonly considered to run from 1747 when he published On the True Estimate of Living Forces to the appearance in 1770 of his inaugural dissertation, On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intellectual Worlds. It is in this period that the origins of his later system of ethical thought can be found. Yet there is very little literature in English dealing with this early period, and many secondary sources deal only with his later major ethical works, the Critique of Practical Reason and Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Schilpp’s book aims to show that ethics was a central preoccupation for Kant long before the Second Critique. His evidence draws together materials not only from Kant’s early published writings but also from unfinished fragments, lecture note, and correspondence.

199 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1998