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Kant and Stoic Ethics

Kant and Stoic Ethics

Kant and Stoic Ethics

Melissa Merritt, University of New South Wales, Sydney
July 2025
Hardback
9781009321334
$120.00
USD
Hardback

    Although it is widely recognised that many concepts central to Kant's ethics have a Stoic provenance, there has still been relatively little close scholarly examination of the significance of Stoic ethics for the development of Kant's philosophy over the Critical period and beyond. This volume brings together an intellectually diverse group of scholars from classics and philosophy to advance our understanding of this topic, taking up questions about the transmission of Stoic philosophy in Kant's intellectual context, the quality of Kant's own understanding of Stoicism, his transformation of some of its central ideas, and the topic's significance to what remains vital about Stoic and Kantian ethics today. The volume will interest those working on the history of philosophy, the nature of rationality, the philosophy of action, moral psychology, and virtue theory.

    • The first edited volume dedicated to the question of the significance of Stoic ethics for Kant
    • Includes a wide range of approaches to the question of the significance of Stoic ethics for Kant
    • Illuminates an area of research previously neglected due to disciplinary norms of research specialization

    Reviews & endorsements

    'Anyone interested in Kant, the Stoics or both will find this collection exciting. It opens up, especially to non-experts, a range of issues where affinities and distances between the Stoics and Kant emerge at deep levels, and it illuminates ethical issues – from rules, virtue and happiness to history and the sublime – where the theories are put in fruitful conversation.' Julia Annas, University of Arizona

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    Product details

    July 2025
    Hardback
    9781009321334
    285 pages
    229 × 152 mm
    Not yet published - available from July 2025

    Table of Contents

    • Introduction
    • Part I. Law and 'Duty':
    • 1. Ethical formulae in ancient stoicism Brad Inwood
    • 2. Duties and permissible actions in the early stoics and Kant Iakovos Vasiliou
    • 3. The stoics and Kant on the motive of duty Jacob Klein
    • Part II. Virtue and Eudaimonia:
    • 4. Kant on the unity and plurality of the virtues Katja Maria Vogt
    • 5. Perfection and morality Stephen Engstrom
    • 6. The stoical sublime I. S. Blecher
    • 7. Kant's rejection of stoic eudaimonism Michael Vazquez
    • 8. Life as a game of skill? Kant and the stoics about the results of human agency Jens Timmermann
    • 9. Living in accordance with nature: Kant and stoicism Paul Guyer
    • Part III. Human Feeling and Ethical Development:
    • 10. On the relationship between orientation and agency: from the stoics' Oikeiôsis to Kant's Orientierung Alix Cohen
    • 11. 'Everyone has a price at which he sells himself': Epictetus and Kant on self-respect Melissa Merritt
    • 12. Anger reinstated: stoics and Kant on anger Nancy Sherman
    • 13. Kant's philosophy of history as stoic consolation Rachel Zuckert
    • Bibliography
    • Index.
      Contributors
    • Brad Inwood, Iakovos Vasiliou, Jacob Klein, Katja Maria Vogt, Stephen Engstrom, I. S. Blecher, Michael Vazquez, Jens Timmermann, Alix Cohen, Melissa Merritt, Nancy Sherman, Rachel Zuckert