Kant's Early Followers in Political Philosophy

by Reidar Maliks (Editor), Elisabeth Theresia Widmer (Editor)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781040385227
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/27/2025
Series:	Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Philosophy
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Reidar Maliks is a professor of philosophy at the University of Oslo. Among his publications are Kant’s Politics in Context (2014) and Kant and the French Revolution (2022).

Elisabeth Theresia Widmer is a postdoctoral researcher at the London School of Economics. She has published several articles on left-Kantian thinkers, and a monograph titled Left-Kantianism in the Marburg School (2023).

Table of Contents

Introduction Reidar Maliks and Elisabeth Theresia Widmer 1. Johann Adam Bergk on Democracy Reidar Maliks 2. Kant and Schlegel on Majority Rule Mike Gregory 3. Fichte’s Incomplete Republicanism J. Colin Bradley 4. Saul Ascher’s Misgivings About Kant’s Political Theology Wojciech Kozyra 5. Karolina on Confining Women to Domestic Labor and Private Reason Olga Lenczewska 6. Ewald and Tieftrunk on Volksaufklärung Feroz Mehmood Shah 7. Government or Citizens? Kant and Johann Adam Bergk on Constitutional Patriotism Takuya Saito 8. Johann Benjamin Erhard’s Critical Account of State Legitimacy Elisabeth Theresia Widmer 9. Johann Heinrich Tieftrunk on How Best to Prevent and Heal Revolutions Valentin Braekman 10. Dictatorship and Insurrection in Schlegel’s Republicanism Fiorella Tomassini 11. Fichte contra Rehberg on the Origin of the Aristocracy and Feudal Inequality Mike Kryluk

Editorial Reviews

Recent decades have seen renewed interest in Kant’s political philosophy, but this is hardly the first wave of such interest. This groundbreaking volume includes philosophically sophisticated and historically sensitive essays on Kant’s earlier followers in political philosophy, examining the ways in which Kantian themes were taken up and modified. Many of these thinkers bring tensions in Kant’s views into sharper focus, as well as pointing the way to new directions in which the same issues might be taken in the future.”

Arthur Ripstein, University of Toronto, Canada

From the Publisher