Reading articles on Kant's practical philosophy sometimes gives you the impression that the Anglophone and German traditions approach their object of study in, textually speaking, two different ways. More often the first sets out with a clear purpose regarding a distinct subject, focusing on relevant material throughout the text. The second takes more of an explorative approach and concentrates on as little as one specific section or paragraph (of course with the occasional detour), accentuating discoveries along the road rather than arriving at a certain end. Whereas no conclusions regarding the relative fruitfulness of the two approaches will be drawn here, in the Cambridge series on ‘The German Philosophical Tradition’ there is now available a compilation of translated essays that may serve as a good introduction both to a scholarly approach and to scholars themselves unfortunately tending to fall outside the acquaintance of a strictly English reading public.

Editors Karl Ameriks and Otfried Höffe have in Kant's Moral and Legal Philosophy gathered a fine collection of commentary essays written by prominent members of German academia. The essays mainly stem from Höffe's already well-established publication series Klassiker Auslegen, a series that for the last decade or so has provided valuable interpretative advice relating to classical philosophical texts. Also this English equivalent of a ‘cooperative commentary’, which reflects the ‘steady stream of significant new [German] Kant scholarship’ (pp. 2ff.),Footnote 1 is perhaps primarily aimed at (graduate) university students, although all scholars of Kant's practical philosophy will find essays of interest. Through detailed analysis, the contributors address and comment on what they hold to be often overlooked key passages, to present a nuanced perspective, mainly from within the Kantian tradition itself. The close orientation towards the original texts characterizes the vast majority of the essays and provides them with an impressive argumentative solidity, without becoming too dense or convoluted in the process.

The first part paints an introductory picture of Kant's practical philosophy. The two essays in this section take a somewhat different route from the other contributions, less orientated towards a textual analysis of a certain passage than highlighting the theoretical context of Kant's moral thought, in this case regarding its early conceptions. Dieter Henrich and Clemens Schwaiger call attention to the influence that, respectively, Hutcheson and Baumgarten exercised on Kant at this stage. Although the pair ultimately become the objects of significant critique, Henrich and Schwaiger convincingly show how they played highly important roles as stepping stones for the early development of Kant's moral conceptions.

Henrich vividly portrays the instructive role played by Hutcheson, a man Kant obviously admired for his sincere attempts to consistently ground morality in a non-empirical manner. Although the specific ‘moral sense’ to which Hutcheson adheres as the first principle of morality is decidedly refuted by Kant, Henrich highlights how the renewed emphasis given to will in moral matters more than suggests that Hutcheson must indeed have been an, if not the, inspirational figure for the development of Kant's ‘concept of rational ethics’ (p. 48). Schwaiger is on his side expressly indebted to the works and approach of Henrich, and in similar fashion examines the influence of Baumgarten and his theory of obligation. Schwaiger's essay is somewhat less elaborate than Henrich's and perhaps lays too much weight on biographical factors towards the end, but it nevertheless points to and explicates a highly essential feature of Kant's moral thought, namely, its acceptance of ‘Baumgarten's radicalisation of the problem of obligation’ (p. 68) – the necessity of a clarification of why and how morality necessarily binds us to act in a certain way. Baumgarten's critique of Wolff for more or less ignoring the concept of obligation serves as theoretical background; particularly illuminating is Schwaiger's emphasis on Baumgarten's view of obligation not merely as a moral necessity (necessitas), but also as moral necessitation (necessitatio) itself.Footnote 2 For any investigation of the early developments of Kant's practical philosophy, we are here provided with good reasons to look closer at the influence of Hutcheson and Baumgarten.

The second part centres on the Groundwork and its main structural and methodological features. Ludwig Siep comments on the preface and critically questions its assertion regarding the necessary purpose of a metaphysics of morals as such, mainly from a more substantive, Hegelian viewpoint. Dieter Schönecker then analyses the specific use and intention of the ‘transitions’ in the work, above all the transition within section I and its consequences for the relationship to the following section. Arguing against Rüdiger Bittner and Reinhard Brandt,Footnote 3 Schönecker aims to show how this transition leads to a form of moral rational knowledge that is not to be identified with the point of departure in section II. It is therefore ‘very problematic’ to hold that section II picks up where the first left off, when there are – as the section headings quite clearly indicate – ‘actually five rather than four forms (or aspects) of moral rational knowledge in the Groundwork’ (p. 101).Footnote 4 This analytical approach is also seen in Schönecker's similarly valuable observation regarding the three separate meaningsFootnote 5 of the term ‘metaphysics of morals’ in this work.

Gerold Prauss's essay carefully examines the need for a ‘reason practical in its own right’ in Kant. Though somewhat short, the essay offers a remarkable and very thorough investigation relating to section III of the Groundwork. Starting with a discussion of the use of the term ‘eigen’ (own), Prauss discusses some implications of what he holds to be an insufficiently clarified ‘positive concept of freedom’ (p. 126, cf. 4: 447, 17) in Kant; the same applies to a ‘concept of the will as a reflexive self-relation’ (p. 128). Finally, Michael Albrecht looks at the more general role of maxims in Kant's ethics and its justification – thereby also providing a bridge to the part of the collection devoted to the second Critique.

Co-editor Höffe here takes up the cue from Albrecht but also distances himself somewhat from the latter in an argumentatively precise and correspondingly convincing interpretative essay on ‘the form of the maxim as the determining ground of the will’. Höffe's text can stand as a prime example of the contributions in the anthology: centred on a relatively short but key passage (§§4–6 in book 1, chapter 1), the essay provides an essential guide to a deeper understanding of Kant's deliberations on the subject. The reading is thorough; the subsequent comments and references are to the point; and the general overview presented is most helpful for any further examination.

The other three essays of this part mainly follow the same recipe, but to a larger degree also bring in passages from other of Kant's writings: Annemarie Pieper leads us through chapter 2 of the Analytic (5: 57–71) with a reading that is heavily influenced by the third Critique; Eckart Förster primarily goes to the first Critique for his accomplished investigation of the dialectic of pure practical reason (5: 107–21); and Friedo Ricken visits both of these works and the Religion in his treatment of the postulates of practical reason (5: 122–48). Although perhaps not entirely unproblematic,Footnote 6 the essays present a good overview of the relevant issues in Kant.

The fourth part focuses on Kant's legal and political philosophy, which has become something of a late bloomer in Kantian scholarship in the last couple of decades. And for very good reasons too, as the four contributions go on to show. Two essays each on Toward Perpetual Peace and the Doctrine of Right cover much ground in well-formulated explorations of a vast and complex terrain, although they rarely stray beyond the nation-state onto the dimension of international law.

Jurist Kristian Kühl leads us stepwise through the argument and concepts involved in Kant's view on property right (Doctrine of Right, §§10–17), whose deduction and reciprocal (or intersubjective) grounding of property rights relations is unfortunately often overlooked. On the basis of the first definitive article of the peace essay, Wolfgang Kersting examines the republican constitution developed there and its internal orientation towards peace. This connection is not always entirely obvious or correctly interpreted, but Kersting's approach certainly clarifies some of the misunderstandings with an in-depth look at the subject.Footnote 7

Bernd Ludwig is responsible for the other essay on the Doctrine of Right, commenting with predictable precision and insight on the second part of Kant's sections on constitutional right (Staatsrecht). Ludwig draws attention not only to the representative democratic aspirations of the pure republic that is Kant's (Platonic) ideal of the state, but also to the at first sight small, but on closer inspection highly significant, changes within Kant's works themselves. By contrast with Kersting, Ludwig stresses that ‘Kant's thoughts on the different political forms of the state underwent considerable development even in the couple of years that separate the essay Toward Perpetual Peace and the Doctrine of Right’ (p. 267), and proceeds to convincingly elaborate this view. The final contribution in the anthology rounds things off nicely with Volker Gerhardt's apt and perceptive reading of the famous secret article of the peace essay, a reading that also indirectly can answer Prauss's earlier objection to a lack of the concept of will as reflexive self-relation. The concept of freedom and our individual wills as ‘self-legislation through practical reason’ (p. 295) take – especially in the domain of politics and political philosophy – both the normative claims of reason and the contingent factors of the human condition into account. For Gerhardt, and I tend to agree, this insight is nowhere better shown than precisely in ‘Kant's repudiation of the idea of philosopher rule’, which in the final instance ‘expressly recognises the connection between our specific situation and social position and our capacity for consistent moral action’ (p. 298).

We are thus provided here with a fine collection of commentary essays. One of several strengths of the publication is its persistent focus on aspects that often are underemphasized in contemporary secondary literature, and it correspondingly provides important insight into these as well as the overall picture. Also, despite the orientation towards particular passages, there are still quite a few distinctive lines (and disagreements) that run throughout the anthology and are worth pursuing: Aristotelian vs. Platonic influence; Hegelian vs. Rousseauian readings, the role of dialectics, etc.

What I mainly find lacking is an attempt at some further clarification of the relationship between legality and morality. Given the title of the book, I cannot see that this is too much to ask. If not the contributions themselves, then at least the introduction or another selected essay should have attempted to give something of an overview regarding how the relationship between moral and legal philosophy in Kant is itself to be interpreted. This is of course no easy or settled matter within Kantian scholarship, but the lack of clarity also finds its way into the concepts employed in the essays.

For instance, the essays of the second part use (as in the Groundwork itself) the concept of ethics (Ethik) as the highest generic term for Kant's moral and legal philosophy. This is characteristic of the introduction as well. But Kant obviously changes his views and conceptual terminology later in his authorship. By the time of his writings that are covered by the fourth part, ethics (cf. the Doctrine of Virtue) is designated as one part of a higher, dual concept of morals (Moral, Sitten) which also includes a doctrine of right (Recht, Rechtslehre). The Doctrine of Right can again be said to indicate something of a change of direction or perspective within Kant's practical philosophy, as for instance Ludwig highlights in his essay and Kersting has noted elsewhere.Footnote 8

This ambiguity makes it at times difficult for translation as well.Footnote 9 But having said that, I think Nicholas Walker's translation significantly helps the flow of the texts and avoids the dangers of a ‘too close’ orientation towards the original German sentence constructions that easily could have made the essays too convoluted.Footnote 10 Disappointing, however, is the number of typographical errors in several of the essays, something that almost any amount of proofreading surely would have been able to detect.Footnote 11 Whereas these mistakes are no substantial hindrance to a proper understanding of the essays, they at times seriously hamper the reading and should clearly have been spotted before publication. Otherwise, the essays of the anthology are certainly helpful for further exploration of the respective passages in Kant's practical philosophy and are – as one would expect – of a general high quality.