Clemens Schwaiger Knihy

This study has given new impetus to the research on the development of Kantian ethics, which has been moribund for some time. Based on a comprehensive evaluation of lecture transcripts which have now been published and the use of computerized support, the previous picture of the moral philosopher Kant who supposedly stopped much too early has to be drastically revised. Using the customarily ignored classification of imperatives as a guideline, the study shows step by step how twisted the long path was to the concept of ethics in the ‹Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten‹ (Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals). In differentiating between skillfulness, prudence and morality as the three basic kinds of practice, Kant succeeds in the end in expressing the exciting complexity of human activity in an ingeniously simple and a simply ingenious manner.

Using the concept of happiness as a guiding motif, this study sheds light on the important sources and the gradual development of Christian Wolff's moral philosophy. The leading representative of the German High Enlightenment deals with the ethical approaches of Descartes, Tschirnhaus and Leibniz and in doing so establishes his own position in regard to the question of happiness.

Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–1762) is regarded justifiably as the most independent of all Wolffians. Up to now however there have been very few systematic studies examining his intellectual originality, apart from his founding of aesthetics. In this volume, the author who was most important for Kant during his school years finally steps out of Wolff's shadow and is revealed to be an epistemologist, a psychologist and moral philosopher. After the recent translation of the ›Metaphysica‹ into German (FMDA 1,2), a pioneering achievement, what follows here is an interpretively groundbreaking detailed study of the key philosophical subjects of the philosopher of the High Enlightenment, just in time for the current anniversaries (250th day of his death in 2012, 300th birthday in 2014).