Kant's ethical thought /

Wood has published on Kant's moral and religious doctrines for two decades; while this work shows wide reading in the appropriate secondary literature, it presents an unusual emphasis on Kant's ethics. Most scholars view Kant's ethics as formal and "deontological"--the absolute and universal command of the moral law imposed by its ground in the nonnatural or noumenal realm of freedom. Freedom or good will is the ideal assertion of the essence of being a person or rational being. From this viewpoint, the problem is how nature, as political and cultural history, can form objective institutions that mirror a nonsensuous, free-of-desire, subjective moral realm. Wood sees in Kant's doctrines of a God-caused, purposive development (through natural strife) of mankind's objective institutions and treatment of persons an indication that Kant should be read in a communitarian manner. This reviewer thinks Woods is wrong: Kant is a deontologist, though he has much to say about moving humanity pragmatically and discusses man as a natural being that fixes his moral aspirations through habit, or virtues. Wood provides very good analysis of specific arguments and, though his central approach may be faulted, he has produced an interesting book that can be read with considerable profit. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and researchers. M. A. Bertman; emeritus, SUNY College at Potsdam