Kant's Observations and Remarks: A Critical Guide

Kant's Observations of 1764 and Remarks of 1764–1765 (a set of fragments written in the margins of his copy of the Observations) document a crucial turning point in his life and thought. Both reveal the growing importance for him of ethics, anthropology and politics, but with an important difference. The Observations attempts to observe human nature directly. The Remarks, by contrast, reveals a revolution in Kant's thinking, largely inspired by Rousseau, who 'turned him around' by disclosing to Kant the idea of a 'state of freedom' (modelled on the state of nature) as a touchstone for his thinking. This and related thoughts anticipate such famous later doctrines as the categorical imperative. This collection of essays by leading Kant scholars illuminates the many and varied topics within these two rich works, including the emerging relations between theory and practice, ethics and anthropology, men and women, philosophy, history and the 'rights of man'.

Susan Meld Shell is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Boston College, Massachusetts. She is author of Kant and the Limits of Autonomy (2009), The Embodiment of Reason: Kant on Spirit, Generation and Community (1996) and The Rights of Reason: A Study of Kant's Philosophy and Politics (1980). She is co-editor (with Robert Faulkner) of America at Risk: Threats to Liberal Self-Government in an Age of Uncertainty (2009).

Richard Velkley is Celia Scott Weatherhead Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University, New Orleans. He is the author of Heidegger, Strauss, and the Premises of Philosophy: On Original Forgetting (2011), Being after Rousseau: Philosophy and Culture in Question (2002) and Freedom and the End of Reason: On the Moral Foundation of Kant's Critical Philosophy (1989). He is editor of Freedom and the Human Person (2007) and Dieter Henrich's The Unity of Reason: Essays on Kant's Philosophy (1994).