Freedom and Force: Essays on Kant's Legal Philosophy

Description

This collection of essays takes as its starting point Arthur Ripstein's Force and Freedom: Kant's Legal and Political Philosophy, a seminal work on Kant's thinking about law, which also treats many of the contemporary issues of legal and political philosophy. The essays offer readings and elucidations of Ripstein's thought, dispute some of his claims and extend some of his themes within broader philosophical contexts, thus developing the significance of Ripstein's ideas for contemporary legal and political philosophy. All of the essays are contributions to normative philosophy in a broadly Kantian spirit. Prominent themes include rights in the body, the relation between morality and law, the nature of coercion and its role in legal obligation, the role of indeterminacy in law, the nature and justification of political society and the theory of the state. This volume will be of interest to a wide audience, including legal scholars, Kant scholars, and philosophers with an interest in Kant or in legal and political philosophy.

Sari Kisilevsky is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Queens College in the City University of New York. Martin J Stone is Professor of Law in the Benjamin N Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research.

The book is a model of the genre: not only are all the essays exceptionally well developed, they unfold in a coherent sequence, aided by Stone's virtuoso introduction... a superb book that goes to the heart of Ripstein's legal theory-a theory that is itself justly at the heart of legal philosophy today. -- Nick Sage, London School of Economics and Political Science * Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence *