Natural Law - (Kant's Sources in Translation) by Gottfried Achenwall (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

As the first translation into any modern language of Achenwall's Ius naturae, from the 1763 edition used by Immanuel Kant, this is an essential work for students and Kant scholars. For over twenty years, Kant used this book as the basis for his lectures on natural law. It has influenced his legal and political philosophy, as well as his ethics, and is indispensable for understanding Kant's Feyerabend Lectures on Natural Law and his Metaphysics of Morals.

Achenwall's Ius naturae focuses on the fundamental principles of legal and political philosophy. It first discusses the natural rights and obligations pertaining to the relations of humans independently of their membership in particular communities, and then discusses those pertaining to the family, the state, and international relations.

Articulating his theory with clear definitions, precise distinctions, and instructive comparisons with the work of Grotius, Hobbes, Pufendorf, Wolff, and others, Achenwall offers a lucid account that fits squarely in the natural law tradition. His handbook is of interest to scholars of natural law, social contract theory, and the history of political theory more generally.

This is a complete English translation of both volumes of the 1763 edition. The volume also includes an Introduction by eminent Kant scholar Paul Guyer, comparing Achenwall's theory to the legal and political philosophy of Kant's Doctrine of Right. Moreover, the volume features a concordance correlating the Ius naturae to Kant's Feyerabend Lectures on Natural Law.

Review Quotes

"An essential source that will be of great interest to anyone working on Kant's political writings, legal history and history of political thought." --Arthur Ripstein, Professor of Law and Philosophy, University of Toronto, Canada

"Corinna Vermeulen's translation of Achenwall's work allows us to access this neglected thinker's philosophy. We can use this volume to see how Kant developed his own positions in response, particularly in Kant's course lecture using Achenwall's book as a text but also in his published writings. It's important for understanding Kant's political philosophy to see that he was responding to others besides Hobbes, Rousseau, and Locke." --Frederick Rauscher, Professor of Philosophy, Michigan State University, USA

"This is an invaluable volume. No branch of Kant's philosophy relies more on historical context than his legal thought, and Achenwall holds the key to it. Scholars interested in the philosophy of law and its history will welcome this book, particularly those whose native tongue is not Latin." --Jens Timmermann, Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of St Andrews, United Kingdom

"This first English translation makes easily accessible to scholars the handbook on which Kant commented in his courses on natural right, providing an indispensable, yet largely overlooked resource for a better understanding of Kant's juridical and political thought. Corinna Vermeulen's competent translation, which includes helpful emendations to the Latin text, is an important contribution to the studies on the wide-ranging German discussion on natural law theory." --Stefano Bacin, Senior Assistant Professor of History of Philosophy, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy

About the Author

Pauline Kleingeld is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. She is the author of Kant and Cosmopolitanism: The Philosophical Ideal of World Citizenship (2012) and Fortschritt und Vernunft: Zur Geschichtsphilosophie Kants (1995).

Corinna Vermeulen (PhD Utrecht, 2007) is a professional translator and has translated Latin works by Grotius, Descartes, and Spinoza.

Paul Guyer is the Jonathan Nelson Professor of Humanities and Philosophy at Brown University. He is the author of eleven books on the philosophy of Kant, most recently Virtues of Freedom (2016) and Kant on the Rationality of Morality (2019), as well as of A History of Modern Aesthetics in three volumes (2014).