Moral Philosophy from Montaigne to Kant

This anthology contains excerpts from some thirty-two important seventeenth- and eighteenth-century moral philosophers. Including a substantial introduction and extensive bibliographies, the anthology facilitates the study and teaching of early modern moral philosophy in its crucial formative period. As well as well-known thinkers such as Hobbes, Hume, and Kant, there are excerpts from a wide range of philosophers never previously assembled in one text, such as Grotius, Pufendorf, Nicole, Clarke, Leibniz, Malebranche, Holbach and Paley. Originally issued as a two-volume edition in 1990, the anthology is now re-issued with a new foreword by Professor Schneewind, as a one-volume anthology to serve as a companion to his highly successful history of modern ethics, The Invention of Autonomy. The anthology provides many of the sources discussed in The Invention of Autonomy and taken together the two volumes will be an invaluable resource for the teaching of the history of modern moral philosophy.

• Purpose of reissue is to provide a companion to The Invention of Autonomy, a highly successful study of the history of ethics • Texts in anthology are discussed in The Invention of Autonomy and so the anthology will be used in same courses • Schneewind is regarded as a preeminent historian of philosophy enjoying an international reputation

Introduction; Prolegomena: some questions raised: 1. Michel de Montaigne; Part I. Reworking Natural Law: 2. Francisco Suarez; 3. Hugo Grotius; 4. Thomas Hobbes; 5. Richard Cumberland; 6. Samuel Pufendorf; 7. John Locke; Part II. Intellect and Morality: 8. Guillaume du Vair; 9. Rene Descartes; 10. Benedict de Spinoza; 11. Nicholas Malebranche; 12. Ralph Cudworth; 13. Samuel Clarke; 14. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz; 15. Christian Wolff; Part III. Epicureans and Egoists: 16. Pierre Gassendi; 17. Pierre Nicole; 18. Bernard Mandeville; 19. John Gay; 20. Claude Adrien Helvetius; 21. Paul Henri Thiry, Baron d’Holbach; 22. William Paley; 23. Jeremy Bentham; Part IV. Autonomy and Responsibility: 24. The Earl of Shaftesbury; 25. Francis Hutcheson; 26. Joseph Butler; 27. David Hume; 28. Christian August Crusius; 29. Richard Price; 30. Jean-Jacques Rousseau; 31. Thomas Reid; 32. Immanuel Kant.

‘This is not just a textbook in ethics, though it can be used as a text, and it is not just a sourcebook, though it is that too. It is a groundbreaking inquiry into the history of ethics …’. Ethics

‘It is designed to provoke research, generate controversy, recover lost insights, renew potentially useful moral idioms, and, as Hume might have said ‘enlarge our view’ of ourselves.’ Canadian Philosophical Reviews

‘… questions common assumptions about the history of philosophy and makes a powerful case for changing the way we teach it.’ Teaching Philosophy