The Rights of Reason: A Study of Kant’s Philosophy and Politics

Meld Shell, Susan. The Rights of Reason: A Study of Kant’s Philosophy and Politics, Toronto and London: University of Toronto Press, 1980.

From a review:

So what little is available in English on Kant’s Rechtslehre that’s any book length treatments is welcome. Susan Shell’s book must be more than welcome since it brings a perception that is both deep and refreshing to a text often seen as one of the more arid stretches of Kant’s writings. This is the more remarkable in that shall appears to have dodged the decision between detailed commentary and reflective study. The book contains a selective commentary on the Doctrine of Right; however, many of these pages are given over to discussion of Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View and other shorter essays on political philosophy and on the philosophy of history. Barely 40 pages of the book consist principally of commentary on the Doctrine of Right. However, these pages follow the order of the text in a way that might have proved disruptive to the balance of reflective study in which the commentary is embedded in the event this danger is  deviated: the general themes of Kantian philosophy discussed in earlier chapters are deployed to clarify and often illuminate the text of the Rechtslehre  without any hiatus.

Review in Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. XII, No. 4

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