Kant's Early Followers in Political Philosophy

Reidar Maliks, Elisabeth Theresia Widmer

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781040385227
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

Immanuel Kant influenced a large and productive group of political philosophers in the 1790s. This volume argues that they brought out more fully the egalitarian principles of Kantian republicanism.

"The Kantian school" featured young philosophers including Saul Ascher, Johann Adam Bergk, Johann Benjamin Erhard, Johann Ludwig Ewald, the early Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Schlegel, and Johann Heinrich Tieftrunk. The chapters in this volume analyze their work in relation to Kant and their wider philosophical and political context. They advance three main theses. First, the Kantians defended popular sovereignty and several of them supported the extension of the right to vote to workers and women. Second, several of them developed a political perfectionism, the view that equal political rights are justified for their effects on cultivating moral character. Third, they developed sophisticated theories of state legitimacy and collective action, defending a people's right to change their constitution, either through reform or through revolution.

Kant's Early Followers in Political Philosophy offers a systematic view into a neglected group of thinkers at a foundational moment for modern political thought. It will be of interest to scholars and graduate students working on Kant, eighteenth- century philosophy, political philosophy, and the history of early modern German political thought.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsement
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Johann Adam Bergk on Democracy
• 2 Kant and Schlegel on Majority Rule
• 3 Fichte’s Incomplete Republicanism
• 4 Saul Ascher’s Misgivings about Kant’s Political Theology1
• 5 Karolina on Confining Women to Domestic Labor and Private Reason
• 6 Ewald and Tieftrunk on Volksaufklärung
• 7 Government or Citizens?: Kant and Johann Adam Bergk on Constitutional Patriotism
• 8 Johann Benjamin Erhard’s Critical Account of State Legitimacy
• 9 Johann Heinrich Tieftrunk on How Best to Prevent and Heal Revolutions
• 10 Dictatorship and Insurrection in Schlegel’s Republicanism
• 11 Fichte contra Rehberg on the Origin of the Aristocracy and Feudal Inequality
• Index