Reviews (10)

Which translation of the Grundlegung is right for you?
There is no doubt that Kant's Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten is one of the three or four most important texts of modern moral philosophy.The only question is, if you have to rely on an English translation, which translation is best?I think that depends on why you are reading this book.If you have only a casual interest in Kant, or if you are reading this book only because it is required for a class and you plan on selling this book back to the university co-op the second the semester ends (if not before), then I would definitely go with the Hackett; Ellington's translation is quite good and reads well, plus it's cheap (in general, Hackett produces reliable, though rarely definitive, and inexpensive translations).If you prefer a more literal translation, I would recommend either the Allen Wood translation (Yale) or the Mary Gregor translation (Cambridge), though you sacrifice a bit of readability with Gregor and a bit more with Wood.Wood says that his translation is intended to be more literal than Gregor's, but in my opinion he does not altogether succeed in that intention; I believe the Wood and Gregor translations are roughly of the same caliber (for example, they both translate Verstand as "understanding" as opposed to "intellect").Oxford also has a translation out, but I have not reviewed it yet.

If, however, you have a serious interest in Kant, then I would recommend the volume entitled _Practical Philosophy_, published as part of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant._Practical Philosophy_ includes the Groundwork, the Critique of Practical Reason, and The Metaphysics of Morals (all translated by Gregor), in addition to the essays on Enlightenment and Perpetual Peace.

Profound, Inspiring, and, Of Course, Difficult
Kant's Groundwork (or Foundations) of the Metaphysics of Morals is probably the single most influential work of philosophical ethics since Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics.While Kant himself considered this a sort of introduction to ethical thinking, it's come to be his most influential and widely read work on ethics.Despite its length--it's less than a hundred pages--this is a work of remarkable depth and intellectual insight.

And what makes the Groundwork especially interesting is its clear statement of a distinctive Kantian vision of the nature of morality.It's not just that this work includes original and exceptionally insightful philosophizing, but that there's a vision of morality underlying the details, and it's a general conception of morality in which there is something inspiring and awesome.The absolutism, the lack of concern for consequences and for human nature, the emphasis on a sort of radical freedom, the distrust of human feeling, the emphasis on our rationality--all of these are elements of Kant's emphasis on the purity of ethics.(Later works reveal that Kant's thinking about these issues was considerably more complex, but there is something fundamental about the presentation here--even if it doesn't provide a wholly accurate account of all his thinking.)Moral action, he claims, is action in which we act for duty's sake, and acting for duty's sake requires an independence of one's actions from our ordinary concerns, from everyday motives and inclinations, from self-interest, and from nearly all human feeling.And since moral action is free action, understanding moral action in this way requires Kant to carve out a sphere of freedom in which we are the authors of our actions. It's not just that we're free of external constraints in moral action; we also need to be free of the characteristics qualities of our personalities and of the distinctive patterns of thought and feeling that constitute human nature.Nevertheless, Kant claims that the moral law is one that comes from within--though not from our contingent feelings and desires.It is instead a law that we give to ourselves as rational beings.In moral action we act in ways that express our natural as rational beings, and only as rational beings.So act morally, acting with a wholly good will, is action in which we reveal ourselves to beings deserving of the dignity that comes with being a free and rational being.

Now, even though this is intended as an introduction to Kant's moral thought, this isn't an easy work.It needs to be read and re-read (and, I suppose, re-read) to be fully understood and appreciated.I've never found Kant as difficult and obscure as his reputation would suggest, but as a writer of philosophical prose he's certainly not the caliber of, say, Hume or Descartes.Still, Kant's ideas in the Groundwork, while subtle and sometimes elusive, are profound and original, and this book is a must-read for anyone interested in philosophical ethics.

Kant's aim in the Groundwork is to discover the fundamental principle of morality.In the first section he attempts to derive this fundamental principle from ordinary moral thought.In particular, he attempts to derive this principle from considerations concerning what is unconditionally good.Kant claims that the only thing that is unconditionally good is a good will.Moreover, its goodness is not a matter of the results of acting on a good will; it is good in itself.As a matter of fact, Kant claims that the results of an action done with a good will and the aims and inclinations of the agent with the good will are morally insignificant.

What, then, is it to act with a good will?It is, Kant argues, a matter of doing one's duty for duty's sake, regardless of one's feeling and the results of doing so.What is it to act from duty's sake? It is to act from principles that accord with the fundamental principle of morality.And here we get the first formulation of the fundamental principle of morality: act only on maxims that you can consistently will to be universal laws. In other words, if one is unable to will the principle of one's action to become a universal law, the action is morally impermissible.

In the second section of the Groundwork Kant attempts to draw the same conclusion from some philosophical points about the nature of duty.He begins by claiming that our knowledge of our duty is a priori and based on the exercise of reason.He then argues that facts about our duties are necessary facts, and that this shows that they must be based on a categorical imperative: that is, that our duties apply to us insofar as we are rational beings, irrespective of the contingent aspects of their nature.And, Kant argues, the one categorical imperative is the fundamental principle of morality mentioned above.He then applies this principle to some examples in order to display just how it grounds our duties in particular cases.

The rest of the second section is filled with lots of interesting, albeit abstruse, ideas.First, Kant attempts to ground the categorical imperative in something that is of unconditional worth.What is that something?The existence of rational beings, which, he says, is an end in itself.And this leads to a second formulation of the categorical imperative: (ii) act only in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in the person of yourself or someone else, as an end and never merely as a means.

This section also includes a third formulation of the categorical imperative: (iii) act only on maxims that you could will to become universal laws legislated by your own will.This formulation encapsulates Kant's claim that we can achieve autonomy only by acting in accordance with the moral law.Conformity with the moral law does not constrain our freedom since we legislate the moral law for ourselves.The moral law is not forced on us from without; its source is to be found in our own rational nature.Indeed, it is only by acting morally that we are able to achieve genuine freedom by transcending the contingent desires and inclinations that are beyond our control.

Of course, that doesn't come close to summing up the Groundwork.But it's a start.

Reviews (4)

A thought-provoking book
Not for causal reading, but if you can stick it out from cover to cover there is alot here for a lay reader to pick up on about analytic philosophy.

Spliting Hairs Infinitesimally
He doesn't do much theorem proving, but he tackles
head on all the basic problem of mathematics that were known
a hundred years ago. It was how well he did everything
that makes this still a must read if you love mathematics.
There is actually only one equation in his book that I can think of:
and it is of a Clifford geometry measure! This man was a mathematician's
mathematician and a metamathematics master in the language of
philosophy as well! The pages are falling out and I still
go to this and Sommerville when I want inspiration or understanding of really hard issues.

Editorial Review

Could it be true that Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica is the most influential book written in the 20th century?Ask any mathematician or philosopher--or anyone who understands the impact these fields have had on modern thinking--and you'll get a short answer: yes. Their goal, to set mathematics on a firm logical foundation, was revolutionary, and their tools and rigor continue to influence modern professionals. Using Peano's symbolic logic, they formalized axioms and produced theorems (including the famous "1 + 1 = 2") in orderings, continuous functions, and other areas of mathematics.

Reviews (2)

Great selection of russell's more technical papers
I would give 5 stars to Russell's essays but 3 stars to this edition.
This edition contains most of the important/technical papers that russel wrote & are still worth reading for any serious philosophy student. The editor did a great job at selection but his snobbish introductory essays prefacing each russell essay is a complete waste of space & (your) time. The editor should have but didn't bother to update the logical symbols in the 1st russell essay, 'logic of relations', with the result that it would be incomprehensible even to people trained in symbolic logic.
'philosophy of logical atomism', for me anyway, helps me understand wittgenstein's Tractatus, which was otherwise incomprehsible to me.
I didn't make it through 'on denoting'. Who would really care about this important but by now mainly historical essay if you have already learned quantification theory & description theory?

Editorial Review

Gödel's incompleteness theorem--which showed that any robust mathematical system contains statements that are true yet unprovable within the system--is an anomaly in 20th-century mathematics. Its conclusions are as strange as they are profound, but, unlike other recent theorems of comparable importance, grasping the main steps of the proof requires little more than high school algebra and a bit of patience. Ernest Nagel and James Newman's original text was one of the first (and best) to bring Gödel's ideas to a mass audience. With brevity and clarity, the volume described the historical context that made Gödel's theorem so paradigm-shattering. Where the first edition fell down, however, was in the guts of the proof itself; the brevity that served so well in defining the problem made their rendering of Gödel's solution so dense as to be nearly indigestible.

Reviews (19)

A thought-provoking book
One of my favorite books by Russell!A very straight-forward introduction to philosophical issues as Russell saw them.

Good introduction to certain kinds of philosophical problems
I remember reading this little book over and over again in order to understand what philosophers truly think about. I am not sure that I understand most of it then, and I am sure that I do not remember most of it now. But I know one of the topics was the 'reality' or non- reality of what the visible world gives. Appearance and reality. Another topic if I remember rightly is the mind-body problem. And Russell I believe here takes on the Descartian cogito and tells us that it does not mean that Descartes has proved that there is an 'I thinking' but rather only that there is ' thinking'.Russell in this seems to be something like avery strange kind of Buddhist. In any case it is these hard problems of epistemology that are at the center of this small work.
The other kinds of big problems, moral and aesthetic, religious also which are at the heart of a good share of human experience are perhaps not quantifiable enough for Russell's kind of philosophical consideration here. The man that tried to reduce all of mathematics to logic did take on these other kinds of more 'human ' questions in other works though not I might say to the satisfaction of many of us old religious believers.
This little book is however a clear and challenging introduction to major epistemological questions.

Reviews (2)

Book Summary -- Our Knowledge of the External World
"Our Knowledge of the External World" first appeared as a series of lectures delivered by Bertrand Russell while in Boston in the early spring of 1914. Fifteen years passed before Russell published these Lowell Lectures with the goal of introducing his "logical-analytic method" to the wider general public with the express purpose of finding "whatever objective scientific knowledge it is possible to obtain" (v). In writing this book Russell also hoped to stake a future claim for philosophy.

The barrage of scientific and mathematical discoveries during the early 20th century brought into question the future relevancy and legitimacy of philosophy. For Russell, philosophy found itself at a critical juncture, "Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning," with Russell's position being, "The problems and the method of philosophy have, I believe, been misconceived by all schools, many of its traditional problems being insoluble with our means of knowledge, while other more neglected but not less important problems can, [through Russell's Logical Atomism], be solved with all the precision and certainty to which the most advanced sciences have attained" (11). Russell envisioned a very specific purpose for philosophy, but realized that his brand of "Logical Atomism" would have to first overcome the entrenched "classical tradition" of Immanuel Kant and "evolutionism" of Herbert Spencer that was popular at the time.

Russell wrote that his interpretation of what philosophy should be "is to help us to understand the general aspects of the world and the logical analysis of familiar but complex things" (22). Philosophy's success in achieving these ends may then provide an ancillary boon to the other sciences. Russell writes, "The philosophy, therefore, which is to be genuinely inspired by the scientific spirit, must deal with somewhat dry and abstract maters, and must not hope to find an answer to the practical problems of life" (31).

In Russell's opinion both the classical tradition and evolutionism erred by presuming that either reason or intuition provided the path to truth. Concerning this false demarcation Russell writes,"insight, untested and unsupported, is an insufficient guarantee of truth...insight is what first leads to the beliefs which subsequent reason confirms or confutes(24-25)," and finally "It is neither intellect nor intuition, but sensation, that supplies new data...intellect is much more capable of dealing with [sensations] than intuition" (28). In contrast, Logical Atomism rejected the classical notion of a priori reasoning in favor of a deductive science based raw sense-data.

The basic premise of Logical Atomism is that all knowledge is ultimately reducible to problems of logic. According to Russell we build this stock of "common knowledge" through either acquaintance (i.e. direct experience) or description (i.e. vicarious experience). While he concedes that his Logical Atomism originated in the field of mathematical logic, Russell argues that it has since developed into its own discipline of philosophical logic, quite distinct from its mathematical origins. Russell's philosophical logic is primarily concerned with the misunderstandings that occur as a result of not clearly differentiating between the logical "form" of a sentence and its "constituent" parts. Russell writes, "In order to understand a sentence, it is necessary to have knowledge both of the constituents and of the particular instance of the form" (41). Simply, this is the task of philosophical logic-to realize that all sentences do not conform to the subject-predicate form.

Russell stated his philosophical methodology as follows:

"We start from a body of common knowledge, which constitutes our data. On examination, the data are found to be complex, rather vague, and largely interdependent logically. By analysis we reduce them to propositions which are as nearly as possible simple and precise, and we arrange them in deductive chains, in which a certain number of initial propositions form a logical guarantee for all the rest" (163).

Through this process Russell believed a higher degree of exactitude could be achieved, and the gap between the world of physics and the world of sensation could be bridged. This was the intellectual climate at Cambridge University during the early 20th century that would later influence others, specifically Wittgenstein, to take the "linguistic turn" in philosophy.

Reviews (1)

Reviews (61)

Wow
This is one of those books that you can't put down until you are done. Who cares if it is somewhat biased... who is not??!!

A Great Work for Research and Philosophy
Bertrand Russell's history of western philosophy makes a great reference work to philosophers and philosophy at large.Naturally Russell, being a philosopher less than a historian, he is critical of the thinkers he canvasses throughout the work.That being said, the history really is great. Russell, being the positivist, isn't too critical on the great thinkers of less enlightened times.Understanding that Russell's views don't discount the philosophies but provide an argument to them, we can use this work as a great reference to philosophy without a great investment of time.

This is the real beauty of the work: it makes a great reference work.If you don't feel like reading the entire thing (which I do suggest) you can use the work in piecemeal. This book provides basic understanding of the tenets of a philosopher while also provide a quick background of the life and times of the philosopher.I have used this book on several occasions to cross reference ideas and re-acquaint myself with the philosophers.

Russell, in writing this book, chose to be concise and this can be seen as a drawback.His descriptions of philosophers and philosophies are by no means complete but they are in the short space he uses filled with information and anecdotes.Naturally he weights the time he spends towards the more important philosophers: he gives a vast section to St Augustine while we spends a scant page and a half on William of Ockham. This makes sense of course and the data he provides on the obscure is certainly enough to wet the mouth so to speak and allow the reader to do some research on his own -- you will have no trouble doing this because the research is well document through a great bibliography.

A major complaint I have seen in regards to this book is that it covers little of the 20th century.I can see why this can be seen as a defect but we must remember that Russell was writing a history and not a field guide.At the time this was first written and even in the times later additions could have been produced the philosophies of existentialism and postmodern relativism etc were still at the forefront of the philosophical debate (in the present) and writing a history on this probably seem absurd.

While Russell himself was apologetic about the way he handled this book in making it less than complete, we should praise him for creating it.Overall it is an excellent work and handled with the command of subject and history that is most rare especially in our times.I wont say that this is the only history of philosophy you should read but it may well be the best.I implore students of philosophy and students of history to get and use this book.If you do not fit into those categories get this book anyway... you will find it not dry but delightful.

-- Ted Murena