Cover

Half-title

Title

Copyright

Contents

Contributors

Abbreviations

Introduction: history as philosophy

Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim

Translator’s Introduction

Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim

First Proposition

Second Proposition

Third Proposition

Fourth Proposition

Fifth Proposition

Sixth Proposition

Seventh Proposition

Eighth Proposition

Ninth Proposition

Chapter 1 Teleology and history in Kant: the critical foundations of Kant’s philosophy of history

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

Chapter 2 The purposive development of human capacities

1. An initial glance: thesis, context, title

1.1. The genetic problem

1.2. The turn after Herder

1.3. The big Idea

2. Complications

2.1. Freedom, nature, history

2.2. Complications in context

2.3. An ambivalence complex

3. Problems in the thesis

3.1. The purpose problem

3.2. The reason problem

3.3. The self-made problem

3.4. The moral problem

4. Assessing Kant’s historical essay

4.1. A genetic account of Kantian epigenesis as not very genetic

4.2. The primacy of the practical, as non-historical and historical

Chapter 3 Reason as a species characteristic

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

Chapter 4 Good out of evil: Kant and the idea of unsocial sociability

I

II

III

Chapter 5 Kant’s Fourth Proposition: the unsociable sociability of human nature

Preliminary: Kant’s first three Propositions

Fourth Proposition: social antagonism

The passions

Love and sympathy

The moral law

Radical evil

Rousseau, Kant, and Goethe

Chapter 6 The crooked timber of mankind

I. “From such crooked timber as humankind is made of nothing entirely straight can be made”

II. Moral politicians

III. Radical evil

IV. Conclusion

Chapter 7 A habitat for humanity

1. The watershed

2. Inheriting benefits

3. The proleptic effect

Chapter 8 Kant’s changing cosmopolitanism

1. The final end of human history

2. Kant’s project in the Idea for a Universal History

3. The nature of the federation of states

4. Modifications to the Seventh Proposition

Building straight with crooked wood: the new importanceof the republic in Kant’s philosophy of right

A second type of federation

From a worldwide European legislation to a more genuine ‘cosmopolitan constitution’

5. Continuity: the final end of human history as a moral world

Chapter 9 The hidden plan of nature

I

History

Entwicklung

Bildung

II

III

Chapter 10 Providence as progress: Kant’s variations on a tale of origins

Chapter 11 Norms, facts, and the philosophy of history

The first problem

The second problem

Chapter 12 Philosophy helps history

I

II

Bibliography

Index of names and works