Kant's Politics of Freedom

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/raju.12136
• Date: 01 September 2016
• Published date: 01 September 2016

Kant’s Politics of Freedom

Stellenindex und Konkordanz zum Naturrecht Feyerabend, Teilband II: Abhandlung des

Naturrecht Feyerabend: Text und Hauptindex; Teilband 3: Abhandlung des Naturrecht

Feyerabend: Konkordanz und Sonderindices. Edited by Heinrich P. Delfosse, Norbert

Hinske, and Gianluca Sadun Bordoni. Band 30. Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: Frommann-

Holzboog, 2014. Pp. cxxxv, 618.

PAUL GUYER

The two volumes under review complete the new edition of Kant’s lecture course

on natural right known as Naturrecht Feyerabend after Gottfried Feyerabend, whose

name appears on the manuscript, with accompanying apparatus that was begun

with the publication of the first part in 2010 (see Kant 2010). (My review of the first

part appeared in 2012 in this journal: see Guyer 2012). The first part presented the

text of the introduction to the lectures with the accompanying index and concord-

ance; the present volumes present the new edition of the body of the lectures as

well as the chief index, concordance, and special indices (especially of Latin terms)

characteristic of the volumes in the Kant-Index series edited by Norbert Hinske.

The two parts of the lectures are different in character. In the first part—about

ten pages —Kant speaks entirely in his own voice about the foundations of moral

philosophy in general and of political and juridical philosophy in particular, with-

out reference to the textbook for the course, Gottfried Achenwall’s Iuris Naturalis

Pars Posterior (Achenwall 1763). The second part now under review is an exposition

of Achenwall’s text with critical comments interspersed. There are philological as

well as philosophical differences between the two parts. The introduction to the

lectures is of immense philosophical importance: Presented during the period

when Kant was writing the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (Kant 1996a;

the title page of the manuscript says “Winter semester 1784,” but the catalogue of

the University at K€

onigsberg states that the course was given in the summer semes-

ter of 1784, when Kant would have been writing the Groundwork published the fol-

lowing spring: To be sure, the course might have been rescheduled, but since the

catalogue also shows Kant lecturing on moral philosophy in the winter semesters

of 1783–1784 and 1784–1785 while his colleagues Buck and Kraus lectured on Ius

Naturae in both winter semesters of 1783–1784 and 1784–1785, this seems unlikely

1

)

1

For this information, see Oberhausenand Pozzo 1999, vol. 2, 493, 500, 506.

V

C2016 The Author. Ratio Juris V

C2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main

Street, Malden 02148, USA.

Ratio Juris. Vol. 29 No. 3 September 2016 (427–432)