German Studies Review

Between the relative obscurity of Kant’s Remarks and the burgeoning interest in the development of Kant’s practical philosophy, this collection should find a large and appreciative readership. Its thirteen chapters provide a diverse set of expert perspectives on Kant’s Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (1764) and the handwritten notes (the Remarks [1764–1765]) in Kant’s interleaved personal copy of the Observations. There is plenty here for specialists in Kant’s moral philosophy. There is much, too, for those working in other areas. Anyone interested in the development of Kant’s thought will benefit from this collection.

For readers somewhat new to the Observations and Remarks, the book’s introduction, by Susan Meld Shell and Richard Velkley, provides a helpful, engaging account of the Observations, the Remarks, and what might be learned from them. The editors point out that the relation between Kant’s notes and the nearby text is often mysterious: there is rarely significant substantive correspondence; and the Remarks were not used to revise the original text of the Observations for later editions. The Remarks capture a subsequent stage of Kant’s philosophical development, a stage that notably reflects engagement with Rousseau’s philosophy beyond what is manifested in the [End Page 414] Observations. A number of chapters explore significant alterations in Kant’s moral thought revealed by comparing the Remarks with the Observations.

Kant’s Observations and Remarks: A Critical Guide is divided into four parts: Part I, “Kant’s Ethical Thought: Sources and Stages”; Part II, “Ethics and Aesthetics”; Part III, “Education, Politics, and National Character”; and Part IV, “Science and History.” Except for chapters one and nine, which were previously published in German, all chapters were commissioned for this volume.

Part I situates Kant’s Observations and Remarks in relation to both Kant’s other early publications, lectures, and notes, and his philosophical influences. Dieter Henrich’s chapter one, “Concerning Kant’s Earliest Ethics: an Attempt at a Reconstruction,” explores the genesis of Kant’s moral philosophy by attending to his engagement with the work of Leibniz, Wolff, Crucius, and Hutcheson prior to the Observations and Remarks. In chapter two, Corey Dyck sheds much-needed and well-deserved light on the influence of Baumgarten on Kant’s ethical thought. Dyck argues that, influenced partly by Baumgarten’s account of false, flattering moralities, Kant’s Remarks reject the Observations account of virtue as aided by feelings of sympathy and love of honor in favor of a more austere conception of virtue closer to that found in his mature works. Patrick Frierson’s chapter three delineates two conceptions of universality found in Kant’s moral philosophy: the one, found in the Observations, primarily concerned with objects of volition; and the other, adumbrated in the Remarks and explicit in the Groundwork, primarily concerning grounds of action. Frierson considers both how the works of Hume, Smith, and Rousseau may have influenced this shift in Kant’s conception of universality, and what this shift reveals about Kant’s deepest philosophical commitments. In chapter four, “Freedom as the Foundation of Morality: Kant’s Early Efforts,” Paul Guyer examines two accounts of the connection between freedom’s absolute value and freedom’s relation to universality that Guyer identifies within in the Remarks and in contemporaneous notes in Kant’s copies of Baumgarten’s Initia and Ethica. Provocatively, Guyer leaves open the questions of which account (if either) Kant ultimately endorses; which is superior; and, indeed, whether either is satisfactory.

Part II opens with a piece that compares interestingly with chapter two: chapter five, “Relating Aesthetic and Sociable Feelings to Moral and Participatory Feelings: Reassessing Kant on Sympathy and Honor.” Rudolf Makkreel argues that Kant’s Doctrine of Virtue (1797) vindicates (to different degrees) sympathy and love of honor as portrayed in the Observations and Remarks. In chapter six, Robert Clewis presents Kant’s distinction between true...