Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Foundations of Ethics
    Foundations of Ethics
    Foundations of Ethics
    Audiobook5 hours

    Foundations of Ethics

    Written by Immanuel Kant

    Narrated by Ray Childs

    5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    These works articulate the most fundamental principles of Kant’s ethical and political world-view. “What is Enlightenment?” (1784) and Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) were written in the period between the American Revolution and the French Revolution.

    Taken together they challenge all free people to think about the requirements for self-determination both in our individual lives and in our public and private institutions.

    Kant’s Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals is dedicated to the proposition that all people can know what we need to know to be honest, good, wise, and virtuous.

    The purpose of Kant’s moral philosophy is to help us become aware of the principles that are already contained within us. Innocence and dependence must be replaced with wisdom and good will if we are to avoid being vulnerable and misguided. According to Kant, freedom of thought leads naturally to freedom of action. When that happens, governments begin to treat human beings, not as machines, but as persons with dignity.

    Immanuel Kant begins "Toward Lasting Peace" by contrasting the realism of practical politicians with the high-minded theories of philosophers who “dream their sweet dreams.” His opening line provides a grim reminder that the only alternative to finding a way to avoid the war of each against all is the lasting peace of the graveyard. The advent of total war and the development of nuclear weapons in the twentieth century give Kant’s reflections an urgency he could not have anticipated.

    Kant published this work in 1795, during the aftermath of the American Revolution and the French Revolution. The high hopes of the European Enlightenment had been dampened by the Reign of Terror in which tens of thousands of people died, and the perpetual cycle of war and temporary armistice seemed to be inescapable. Kant’s essay is best known as an early articulation of the idea of a league of nations that could bring “an end to all hostilities.” Today The United Nations continues to pursue that dream, but lasting peace still seems to be wishful thinking.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAgora Publications
    Release dateJan 1, 2010
    ISBN9781887250740
    Foundations of Ethics
    Author

    Immanuel Kant

    Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher and is known as one of the foremost thinkers of Enlightenment. He is widely recognized for his contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics.

    More audiobooks from Immanuel Kant

    Related to Foundations of Ethics

    Related audiobooks

    Philosophy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Ethics Of Political Power

      Jul 30, 2018

      The Ethics Of Political Power
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Great Morality Scam

      Jul 30, 2018

      The Great Morality Scam
      5 min read

    • Article

      Malthus Was Not a Malthusian

      Jan 1, 2020

      Malthus Was Not a Malthusian
      13 min read

    • Article

      From Worms To Woke

      May 26, 2022

      HAVE WE BEEN HERE BEFORE? Now, in 2022, with war abroad and woke at home, we contemplate the bitter dissolution of the hopes of the late twentieth century. Five hundred years ago, in 1521, Martin Luther’s appearance at the Diet of Worms signalled the

      5 min read

    • Article

      US-China Conflict? Not Really - With Respect To Freedom, Both Nations Share A Common Heritage

      Oct 8, 2021

      Those calling for Anglosphere resistance to China's rise are framing the matter as a zero-sum battle for freedom, yet British columnist Kenan Malik, in a recent piece for The Guardian, disputes the notion that the "Anglosphere" was ever freedom's fla

      5 min read

    • Article

      Reviving the Libertarian Interstate Federalist Tradition: The American Proposal

      Jan 4, 2022

      As we enter the third century of the American experiment it is essential to recognize that we can draw upon two quite distinct intellectual traditions in shaping future patterns of organization. One possibility is to draw upon the intellectual tradit

      35 min read

    • Article

      How Third Worldism Was Silenced

      Aug 8, 2023

      How Third Worldism Was Silenced
      5 min read

    • Article

      May ’68: What Legacy?

      May 1, 2018

      May ’68: What Legacy?
      6 min read

    • Article

      War-war Leads To Jaw-jaw

      Aug 26, 2021

      THE CONVENTIONAL VIEW OF historians has been that the proliferation of written constitutions in recent centuries around the globe was primarily the result of a tendency towards democracy. Linda Colley offers a starkly different interpretation and ram

      4 min read

    • Article

      Abraham Lincoln’s Warning

      Jul 4, 2018

      Abraham Lincoln’s Warning
      4 min read

    • Article

      Know Your Philosophers

      Aug 2, 2020

      Know Your Philosophers
      4 min read

    • Article

      Excerpt

      Dec 12, 2023

      “The general and accepted meaning of the Enlightenment today is that it was a great leap forward in the capacity of humans to control nature, generate wealth and direct their own destinies. It was, so the story goes, a crowning feat of progress and r

      2 min read

    • Article

      'Can Democracy Work?' Considers The Perils And Pitfalls Of The Institution Across Time

      Oct 5, 2018

      Author and academic James Miller examines the idea of democracy in five distinct moments throughout human history, and chronicles how vastly different each iteration has been.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Mont Pèlerin 1947: Transcripts of the Founding Meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society

      Jan 25, 2023

      Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 2022. Pp. xxi, 222. $34.95 hardcover. In the late 1930s, during the worldwide Great Depression and as the totalitarian threat loomed large, a group of scholars gathered in Paris to discuss the fate of liber

      11 min read

    • Article

      The Conservative Divide

      Jun 12, 2019

      The idea holding together the conservative movement since the 1960s was called "fusionism." The concept, which always worked better as an organizing principle than a philosophical one, was that freedom and virtue were inextricably linked. Virtue not

      3 min read

    • Article

      The French Revolution Had Spread To Britain?

      Jun 17, 2021

      Dr Michael Rapport is a historian based at the University of Glasgow who specialises in the French Revolution and its global impact. His books include Rebel Cities: Paris, London And New York In The Age Of Revolution and 1848: Year Of Revolution. In

      6 min read

    • Article

      Foreword

      May 5, 2020

      Foreword
      2 min read

    • Article

      We Need To Reframe The Way We Thinkabout “Free Speech”

      Jun 29, 2023

      NO IDEA IS MORE LOATHED TODAY, especially on the Right (how times change), than censorship. Nothing is worse, we are told, than being “censorious”, and seeking to end “vigorous debate” in the “marketplace of ideas”. But what exactly ensures that a de

      11 min read

    • Article

      In Search Of Unity

      Feb 17, 2022

      In Search Of Unity
      3 min read

    • Article

      Every Leaf on Every Branch

      Dec 7, 2023

      Human rights are what we want out of life for ourselves and our loved ones. The genius of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, co-drafted by Chinese diplomat Peng Chung Chang, is that it extends the enjoyment of dignity, justice, freedom a

      2 min read

    • Article

      How to Make Change, Slowly

      Apr 19, 2022

      How to Make Change, Slowly
      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Foundations of Ethics

    5/5

    2 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words