Kant begegnet uns hier zunächst als Student der Aufklärung zwischen Newton und Leibniz, dann als Selbstdenker, der sich auf den Weg zu einer Kritik der Vernunft macht, um das Philosophieren aus bloßem Spekulieren auf die sichere Bahn einer kritischen Methode zu führen. Unsere Begleitung Kants beginnt mit dessen Kindheit in einem Handwerkerhaus, das von der Erziehung zur „Rechtschaffenheit“ und der Frömmigkeit des Pietismus geprägt ist. Aus dieser warmen Stube macht sich der wißbegierige Student auf in die kühlen Hallen der Mathematik, der Naturwissenschaften und des Aufklärungsgeistes. Die hier vorgelegte Schrift zeigt, daß Kant als Denker zugleich Lehrer der Aufklärung ist. Aus seiner Vorlesung „Über Pädagogik“ lernen wir, was es heißt, selbständig zu denken, und daß Moral eigentlich praktische Vernunft bedeutet. Über Kant hinaus begreifen wir Vernunft als kommunikativen Diskurs, der dem Doppelprinzip folgt: „Verhalte dich so, daß die Auswirkungen deines Handelns verträglich sind mit der Achtung der Menschenwürde und einem verantwortungsfähigen Leben auf Erden. Dann verdient deine Handlungsweise die Zustimmung aller als Diskurspartner, die einzig sinnvolle Argumente gelten lassen.“ Dietrich Böhler, geb. 1942 in Berlin, studierte Theologie, Philosophie u.a. Promotion: Metakritik der Marxschen Ideologiekritik. Habil: Rekonstruktive Pragmatik. Initiator des Funkkollegs Praktische Philosophie/Ethik. 1981-2010 Prof. an der FU Berlin. Gründer des Hans Jonas-Zentrums. Verbindlichkeit aus dem Diskurs (2013/14).

This major study of Hegel's intellectual development up to the writing of The Phenomonology of Spirit argues that his work is best understood in the context of the liberalisation of German Protestantism in the eighteenth century.

This collection contains the first English translations of a group of 18th-century German essays that address the question, "what is Enlightenment?". They explore the origins of 18th-century debate on the Enlightenment, and its significance for the present.

In his popular book The Germans (1982), Stanford historian Gordon Craig remarked: "When German intellectuals at the end of the eighteenth century talked of living in a Frederican age, they were sometimes referring not to the monarch in Sans Souci, but to his namesake, the Berlin bookseller Friedrich Nicolai." Such was the importance attributed to Nicolai’s role in the intellectual life of his age by his own contemporaries. While long neglected by students of the period, who tended to accept the caricature of him as a philistine who failed to recognize Goethe’s genius, Nicolai has experienced a resurgence of interest among scholars reexploring the German Enlightenment and the literary marketplace of the eighteenth century. This book, drawing upon Nicolai’s large unpublished correspondence, rounds out the picture we have of Nicolai already as author and critic by focusing on his roles as bookseller and publisher and as an Aufkärer in the book trade.

Classical political theorists such as Thucydides, Kant, Rousseau, Smith, Hegel, Grotius, Mill, Locke and Clausewitz are often employed to explain and justify contemporary international politics and are seen to constitute the different schools of thought in the discipline. However, traditional interpretations frequently ignore the intellectual and historical context in which these thinkers were writing as well as the lineages through which they came to be appropriated in International Relations. This collection of essays provides alternative interpretations sensitive to these political and intellectual contexts and to the trajectory of their appropriation. The political, sociological, anthropological, legal, economic, philosophical and normative dimensions are shown to be constitutive, not just of classical theories, but of international thought and practice in the contemporary world. Moreover, they challenge traditional accounts of timeless debates and schools of thought and provide new conceptions of core issues such as sovereignty, morality, law, property, imperialism and agency.