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Autonomy and Community: Readings in Contemporary Kantian Social Philosophy. Edited by Jane Kneller and Sidney Axinn. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1998. 334p. $21.95 paper.
Susan Meld Shell, Boston College
Among the more exciting recent developments in Kant scholarship is a new attention to the meaning and importance of Kant's anthropology. The long-awaited publication of Kant's anthropology lectures (Kant, Gesammelte Werke 1997, vol. 25), based on courses taught over thirty years, has made clear what many scholars have long suspected: Far from being a tangential or marginal concern, anthropology lies at the heart of Kant's understanding of his own philosophic and pedagogical project.
Autonomy and Community is a welcome, albeit in some ways problematic, addition to this growing literature. The somewhat uneven collection of essays is divided into two sections. The first aims at establishing the prevalence in Kant's practical thought of social and political concerns that extend beyond the narrow confines of social contract theory and otherwise qualify rigid distinctions, endemic in past scholarship, between the juridical and ethical realms. The second section aims to adapt and apply Kant's insights to contemporary problems, from world conflict and abortion to environmental stress and worker democracy. As Kneller puts it in her thoughtful introduction, "Kant's notion of the state must be thought of as an enabling institution-one that makes possible the prospect of a human community that is not captured in the notion of a social contract" (p. 1). The general purpose of the volume, according to Kneller,...