Essays on Kant's Political Philosophy (review)

BOOK RZVIEWS 679 English in one convenient edition. Since the page numbers of the AkademieAusgabe are given in the margin of the transladons, it should facilitate the consultation of the German text for purposes of a deeper understanding of Kant, and for comparison and verification of the English translation. I am sure that these volumes will soon be the standard edition for citing Kant in English. The project will ultimately stand or fall with the translations of the first, second, and third Critiques. However, if these three volumes are any indication of what is to come, Kant scholarship will be well served by this edition. The volumes under consideration meet the highest standards. Furthermore, the books are handsome and well produced. I am sure that Kant scholars who read Kant in English will not only find them most useful, but will also be proud to have them on their shelves. It is to be hoped that a paperback edition of these works will be published very soon. MANFRED KUEHN Purdue University Howard Lloyd Williams, editor. Essayson Kant's PoliticalPhilosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Pp. xix + 331. Cloth, $32.5o. While post-modernists and communitarians might seek to reinter the only recently revived body of Kant's political thought, this collection indicates the continuing vitality of Kantianism. Howard Lloyd Williams has assembled thirteen stimulating essays-seven of which have appeared elsewhere--written by a diverse group of scholars. Representing four countries and three disciplines, they include law professor Ernest Weinrib, political scientists Patrick Riley, Susan Shell, and Susan Mendus, and philosophers Otfried Htffe, Roger Scruton, and Samuel Fleischacker. The essays range from an exploration of Kant's precritical writings (Shell) through examinations of particular interpretive issues (Weinrib, Fleischacker, Kersting, Atkinson , and Nicholson) and attempts to situate Kant within a wider debate (Williams, Htffe, Scruton, Mendus, and Smith), to efforts to offer some sort of systematic account of Kant's philosophy and politics (O'Neill and Riley). There are advantages and disadvantages to encompassing so many topics in one collection. On the one hand, the reader can sample in one place a variety of approaches to Kant studies. American readers can become acquainted with the efforts of their colleagues abroad. Political scientists and philosophers can examine one another's scholarship. Indeed, inasmuch as they tend to display national and disciplinary insularity , some of the essays in the volume inadvertently argue for the necessity of such exchange and cross-fertilization. For example, Mendus's treatment of the place of women in Kant's political thought would have profited from Shell's presentation of the philosophical results of Kant's encounter with Rousseau. And Atkinson would have been less bemused by Kant's "rigorism" regarding punishment if he had been acquainted with Fleischacker's essay on that subject. On the other hand, the diversity of the collection makes it difficult to discern common themes. The reader longs for something more than Williams provides in his 680 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 32:4 OCTOBER i994 modest introduction to assess the significance of Kant and Kantianism for either contemporary political philosophy or the history of political thought. Fortunately, several of the essays provide clues as to how such an argument could be constructed. In "Hannah Arendt on Kant, Truth, and Politics," Patrick Riley insists that attempts to reconstruct Kant's political thought on currently fashionable nonfoundationalist grounds misconceive Kant's intent. Those who wish to " 'find a way out of pure subjectivity'" in political life by appealing to Kant must come to grips with his teleological accounts of morality, nature, and human nature (3o8). Developed at great length in his book, Kant's Political Philosophy (Rowman and Litflefield, 1982), Riley's argument is that the moral kingdom of ends can be approximated politically by using self-serving incentives to erect structures that resemble it externally. The moral law, in other words, gives rise to a political project. This exposition of Kant's intent leaves open a question about the plausibility of his presentation of universal practical reason. On one level, this issue isjoined by Steven B. Smith in "Defending Hegel from Kant." Agreeing with Kant that practical reason can be effective in...