For more than two centuries, Kant scholars have operated on the unquestioned premise that Kant's three Critiques offered a systematic exposition of his philosophy. But this unitary view, argues T. K. Seung, is gravely mistaken. In Kant's Platonic Revolution in Moral and Political Philosophy, Seung shows how each of the three works represents a major reformulation of the initial commitment to Platonism which Kant had made in his Inaugural Dissertation of 1770. For Kant, Platonic Forms are the basic ideas for constructing moral, aesthetic, and political norms and standards. This is the essence of Kant's Platonic constructivism, which Seung explicates with comparisons to other programs of construction, such as Hobbesian conventionalism and Hegelian historicism. Finally, he clarifies the link between constructivism and deconstruction.

In Platonic Engagements, Helen, a college senior majoring in business and philosophy, raises central questions about ideal individual morality, social justice, education, political philosophies and management based on Plato's principles in the Republic. Plato's moral relevance to current issues in democratic capitalism is put to the test in this contemporary philosophical dialogue.

In this first comprehensive treatment of Plato’s political thought in a long time, John Wallach offers a "critical historicist" interpretation of Plato. Wallach shows how Plato’s theory, while a radical critique of the conventional ethical and political practice of his own era, can be seen as having the potential for contributing to democratic discourse about ethics and politics today. The author argues that Plato articulates and "solves" his Socratic Problem in his various dialogues in different but potentially complementary ways. The book effectively extracts Plato from the straightjacket of Platonism and from the interpretive perspectives of the past fifty years—principally those of Karl Popper, Leo Strauss, Hannah Arendt, M. I. Finley, Jacques Derrida, and Gregory Vlastos. The author’s distinctive approach for understanding Plato—and, he argues, for the history of political theory in general—can inform contemporary theorizing about democracy, opening pathways for criticizing democracy on behalf of virtue, justice, and democracy itself.

A narrative history of philosophical reflection on religion from the seventeenth century to the present.

Past interpreters of Kant’s thought seldom viewed his writings on politics as having much importance, especially in comparison with his writings on ethics, which (along with his major works, such as the Critique of Pure Reason) received the lion’s share of attention. But in recent years a new generation of scholars has revived interest in what Kant had to say about politics. From a position of engagement with today’s most pressing questions, this volume of essays offers a comprehensive introduction to Kant’s often misunderstood political thought. Covering the full range of sources of Kant’s political theory—including not only the Doctrine of Right, the Critiques, and the political essays but also Kant’s lectures and minor writings—the volume’s distinguished contributors demonstrate that Kant’s philosophy offers compelling positions that continue to inspire the best thinking on politics today. Aside from the editor, the contributors are Michaele Ferguson, Louis-Philippe Hodgson, Ian Hunter, John Christian Laursen, Mika LaVaque-Manty, Onora O’Neill, Thomas W. Pogge, Arthur Ripstein, and Robert S. Taylor.

Hannah Arendt's last philosophical work was an intended three-part project entitled The Life of the Mind. Unfortunately, Arendt lived to complete only the first two parts, Thinking and Willing. Of the third, Judging, only the title page, with epigraphs from Cato and Goethe, was found after her death. As the titles suggest, Arendt conceived of her work as roughly parallel to the three Critiques of Immanuel Kant. In fact, while she began work on The Life of the Mind, Arendt lectured on "Kant's Political Philosophy," using the Critique of Judgment as her main text. The present volume brings Arendt's notes for these lectures together with other of her texts on the topic of judging and provides important clues to the likely direction of Arendt's thinking in this area.

This book shows how certain crucial concepts in Kant's aesthetics and practical philosophy fit together and deepen our understanding of his thought.

"This book provides an action-theoretic view of political hope that draws on German idealism, critical theory, and American pragmatism. It offers an alternative to standard perspectives that reduce hope to either a subjective element of individual psychology or to the passive anticipation of the supposedly objective tendencies of the world itself. Featuring chapters on Immanuel Kant, Ernst Bloch, Charles Peirce, and William James, it presents hope instead as a practice of political action that both buttresses and promotes democratic experimentation. By reconstructing hope as a necessary condition for social and political engagement, it furthermore argues for the centrality of utopian thinking for practical action"--

How the great political thinkers have persistently warned against the dangers of economic inequality Economic inequality is one of the most daunting challenges of our time, with public debate often turning to questions of whether it is an inevitable outcome of economic systems and what, if anything, can be done about it. But why, exactly, should inequality worry us? The Greatest of All Plagues demonstrates that this underlying question has been a central preoccupation of some of the most eminent political thinkers of the Western intellectual tradition. David Lay Williams shares bold new perspectives on the writings and ideas of Plato, Jesus, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Marx. He shows how they describe economic inequality as a source of political instability and a corrupter of character and soul, and how they view unchecked inequality as a threat to their most cherished values, such as justice, faith, civic harmony, peace, democracy, and freedom. Williams draws invaluable insights into the societal problems generated by what Plato called “the greatest of all plagues,” and examines the solutions employed through the centuries. An eye-opening work of intellectual history, The Greatest of All Plagues recovers a forgotten past for some of the most timeless books in the Western canon, revealing how economic inequality has been a paramount problem throughout the history of political thought.

Immanuel Kant's legal philosophy and theory have played an enormous role in the development of law since the eighteenth century. Although this influence can be seen primarily in German law and in the law of nations which have traditionally been oriented toward German legal development, today Kant's philosophy has experienced a Renaissance in the Anglo-American legal world. This anthology collects what the editors believe to be the very best of articles on Kant's legal theory, with an emphasis on his Metaphysics of Morals of 1797. In particular the articles relate to: 1) the nature of law and justice, 2) private law, 3) public law, 4) criminal law, 5) international law, and 6) cosmopolitan law.